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LESSONS IN LIFE 



LESSONS IN LIFE 



SERIES OF FAMILIAR ESSAYS 



BY 

TIMOTHY TITCOMB 

AUTHOR OF "LETTERS TO THE YOUNG," " GOLD-FOIL," ETC. 



' A- - 






NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

743 and 745 Broadway 

1881 



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Copyright by 

CHARLES SCRIBNER 

1S61 



Copyright by 
J. G. HOLLAND 



Trow's 

Printing and Bookbinding Company 

201-213 East \"2th Street 

NEW YORK 






PREFACE, 



I CAN hardly say better what I wish to say, in 
presenting to the public the revised edition 
of this book, than to repeat the words of the 
original preface, written just twenty years ago : — 

" The quick and cordial reception which 
greeted the author's ' Letters to the Young,' and 
his more recent series of essays entitled ' Gold 
Foil,' and the constant and substantial friendship 
which has been maintained by the public toward 
those productions, must stand as his apology for 
this third venture in a kindred field of effort. It 
should be — and probably is — unnecessary for the 
author to say that in this book, as in its pre- 
decessors, he has aimed to be neither brilliant 
nor profound. He has endeavored, simply, to 
treat, in a familiar and attractive way, a few of 



vi Preface. 

the more prominent questions which concern the 
life of every thoughtful man and woman. In- 
deed, he can hardly pretend to have done more 
than to organize, and put into form, the average 
thinking of those who read his books — to place 
before the people the sum of their own choicer 
judgments — and he neither expects nor wishes 
for these essays higher praise than that which 
accords to them the quality of common sense.' p 

New York, 1881. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

LESSON I. 
Moods and Frames of Mind, i 



LESSON II. 
Bodily Imperfections and Impediments, . .16 

LESSON III. 
Animal Content, 29 

LESSON IV. 
Reproduction in Kind, 43 

LESSON V. 
Truth and Truthfulness, 57 

LESSON VI. 
Mistakes of Penance, 71 

LESSON VII. 
The Rights of Woman, 84 



viii Co7itents. 



PAGI£ 

LESSON VIII. 
American Public Education 97 



LESSON IX. 
Perverseness, Ill 

LESSON X. 
Undeveloped Resources, 124 

LESSON XI. 
Greatness in Littleness, 135 

LESSON XII. 
Rural Life, 147 

LESSON XIII. 
Repose, . . 161 

LESSON XIV. 
The Ways of Charity .175 

LESSON XV. 
Men of One Idea, . . . . . . . . .191 

LESSON XVI. 
Shying People, . 205 

LESSON XVII. 
Faith in Humanity, 218 



Contents. ix 

PAGE 

LESSON XVIII. 
Sore Spots and Sensitive Spots 232 

LESSON XIX. 
The Influence of Praise, . ... 246 

LESSON XX. 
Unnecessary Burdens, 259 

LESSON XXI. 
Proper People and Perfect People 271 

LESSON XXII. 
The Poetic Test, 284 

LESSON XXIII. 
The Food of Life, . . 298 

LESSON XXIV. 
Half-finished Work, 311 



LESSONS IN LIFE. 



LESSON I. 



MOODS AND FRAMES OF MIND. 

" That blessed mood 
In which the burden of the mystery, 
In which the heavy and the weary weight 
Of all this unintelligible world 
Is lightened." — Wordsworth. 

" Oh, blessed temper, whose unclouded ray 
Can make to-morrow cheerful as to-day." 

—Pope. 

" My heart and mind and self, never in tune ; 
Sad for the most part, then in such a flow 
Of spirits, I seem now hero, now buffoon." 

— Leigh Hunt. 

IT rained yesterday ; and, though it is midsummer, 
it is unpleasantly cool to-day. The sky is clear, 
with almost a steel-blue tint, and the meadows are very 
deeply green. The shadows among the woods are 
black and massive, and the whole face of nature looks 



2 Lessons in Life. 

painfully clean, like that of a healthy little boy who 
has been bathed in a chilly room with very cold water. 
I notice that I am sensitive to a change like this, and 
that my mind goes very reluctantly to its task this 
morning. I look out from my window, and think how 
delightful it would be to take a seat in the sun, down 
under the fence, across the street. It seems to me that 
if I could sit there awhile, and get warm, I could think 
better and write better. Toasting in the sunlight is 
conducive rather to reverie than thought, or I should 
be inclined to try it. This reluctance to commence 
labor, and this looking out of the window and longing 
for an accession of strength, or warmth, or inspiration, 
or something or other not easily named, calls back to 
me an experience of childhood. 

It was summer, and I was attending school. The 
seats were hard, the lessons were dry, and the walls 
of the school-room were very cheerless. An indulgent, 
sweet-faced girl was my teacher ; and I presume that 
she felt the irksomeness of the confinement quite as 
severely as I did. The weather was delightful, and the 
birds were singing everywhere ; and the thought came 
to me, that if I could only stay out of doors, and lie 
down in the shadow of a tree, I could get my lesson. I 
begged the privilege of trying the experiment. The 
kind heart that presided over the school-room could not 
resist my petition ; so I was soon lying in the coveted 
shadow. I went to work very severely ; but the next 



Moods and Frames of Mind. 3 

moment found my eyes wandering ; and heart, feeling, 
and fancy were going up and down the earth in the 
most vagrant fashion. It was hopeless dissipation to sit 
under the tree ; and discovering a huge rock on the hill- 
side, I made my way to that, to try what virtue there 
might be in a shadow not produced by foliage. Seated 
under the brow of the boulder, I again applied myself 
to the dim-looking text, but it had become utterly mean- 
ingless ; and a musical cricket under the rock would 
have put me to sleep if I had permitted myself to re- 
main. I found that neither tree nor rock would lend 
me help ; but down in the meadow I saw the brook 
sparkling, and spanning it a little bridge where I had 
been accustomed to sit, hanging my feet over the water, 
and angling for minnows. It seemed as if the bridge 
and the water might do something for me, and, in a few 
minutes, my feet were dangling from the accustomed 
seat. There, almost under my nose, close to the bot- 
tom of the clear, cool stream, lay a huge speckled trout, 
fanning the sand with his slow fins, and minding nothing 
about me at all. What could a boy do with Colburn's 
First Lessons, when a living trout, as large and nearly 
as long as his arm, lay almost within the reach of his 
fingers? How long I sat there I do not know, but the 
tinkle of a distant bell startled me, and I startled the 
trout, and fish and vision faded before the terrible con- 
sciousness that I knew less of my lesson than I did 
when I left the school-house. 



4 Lessons in Life. 

This has always been my fortune when running after, 
or looking for, moods. There is a popular hallucination 
that makes of authors a romantic people who are en- 
tirely dependent upon moods and moments of inspira- 
tion for the power to labor in their peculiar way. 
Authors are supposed to write when they " feel like it, " 
and at no other time. Visions of Byron with a gin-bot- 
tle at his side, and a beautiful woman hanging over his 
shoulder, dashing off a dozen stanzas of Childe Harold 
at a sitting, flit through the brains of sentimental youth. 
We hear of women who are seized suddenly by an idea, 
as if it were a colic, or a flea, often at midnight, and 
are obliged to rise and dispose of it in some way. We 
are told of very delicate girls who carry pencils and 
cards with them, to take the names and address of such 
angels as may visit them in out-of-the-way places. We 
read of poets who go on long sprees, and after recovery 
retire to their rooms and work night and day, eating not 
and sleeping little, and in some miraculous way produ- 
cing wonderful literary creations. The mind of a literary 
man is supposed to be like a shallow summer brook, 
that turns a mill. There is no water except when it 
rains, and the weather being very fickle, it is never 
known when there will be water. Sometimes, how- 
ever, there comes a freshet, and then the mill runs 
night and day, until the water subsides, and another 
dry time comes on. 

Now, while I am aware, as every writer must be, 



Moods and Frames of Mind. 5 

that the brain works very much better at some times 
than it does at others, I can declare, without reservation, 
that no man who depends upon moods for the power to 
write can possibly accomplish much. I know men who 
rely upon their moods, alike for the disposition and the 
ability to write, but they are, without exception, lazy 
and inefficient men. They never have accomplished 
much, and they never will accomplish much. Regular 
eating, regular sleeping, regular working — these are the 
secrets of all true literary success. A man may throw 
off a single little poem by a spasm, but he cannot write 
a poem of three thousand lines by spasms. Spasms 
that produce poems like this, must last from five to 
seven hours a day, through six days of every week, and 
four weeks of every month, until the work shall be fin- 
ished. There is no good reason why the mind will not 
do its best by regular exercise and usage. The mower 
starts in the morning with a lame back and with aching 
joints ; but he keeps on mowing, and the glow rises, 
and the perspiration starts, and he becomes interested 
in his labor, and, at length, he finds himself at work 
with full efficiency. He was not in the mood for mow- 
ing when he began, but mowing brought its own mood, 
and he knew it would when he began. The mind is 
sometimes lame in the morning. It refuses to go to 
work. Our wills seem entirely insufficient to drive it to 
its tasks ; but if it be driven to its work and held to it 
persistently, and held thus every day, it will ultimately 



6 Lessons in Life. 

be able to do its best every day. A man who works his 
brains for a living, must work them just as regularly as 
the omnibus-driver does his horses. 

We sometimes go to church and hear a preacher 
who depends upon his moods for the power to preach 
his best. He preaches well, and we say that he is in 
the mood ; and then again he preaches poorly, and we 
say that he is not in the mood. A public singer who 
has the power to move us at her will, comes into the 
concert-room, and gives her music without spirit and 
without making any apparent effort to please. We 
say that Madame or Mademoiselle is " not in the mood 
to-night." A lecturer has his moods, which, appa- 
rently, he slips on and off as he would a dressing-gown, 
charming the people of one town by his eloquence and 
elegance, and disgusting another by his dulness and 
carelessness. We are in the habit of saying that cer- 
tain men are very unequal in their performances, which 
is only a way of saying that they are moody, and de- 
pendent upon and controlled by moods. I think that, 
in any work or walk of life, a man can in a great de- 
gree become the master of his moods, so that, as a 
preacher, or a singer, or a lecturer, he can do his best 
every time quite as regularly as a writer can do his 
best every time. Mr. Benedict somewhat inelegantly 
remarked, when in this country, that the reason of 
Jenny Lind's success was, that she " made a conscience 
of her art." If we had asked Mr. Benedict to explain 



Moods and Frames of Mind. 7 

himself, he probably would have said that she con- 
scientiously did her best every time, in every place. 
This was true of Jenny Lind. She never failed. She 
sang just as well in the old church where the country 
people had flocked to greet her, as in the halls of the 
metropolis. Yet Jenny Lind was decidedly a woman of 
moods, and indulged in them when she could afford it. 
The power of the will over moods of the mind is 
very noticeable in children. Children often rise in the 
morning in any thing but an amiable frame of mind. 
Petulant, impatient, quarrelsome, they cannot be 
spoken to or touched without producing an explosion of 
ill-nature. Sleep seems to have been a bath of vinegar 
to them, and one would think the fluid had invaded their 
mouth and nose., and eyes and ears, and had been ab- 
sorbed by every pore of their sensitive skins. In a con- 
dition like this, I have seen them bent over the parental 
knee, and their persons subjected to blows from the pa- 
rental palm ; and they have emerged from the infliction 
with the vinegar all expelled, and their faces shining 
like the morning — the transition complete and satisfac- 
tory to all the parties. Three-quarterss of the moods 
that men and women find themselves in, are just as 
much under the control of the will as this. The man 
who rises in the morning with his feelings all bristling 
like the quills of a hedgehog, simply needs to be 
knocked down. Like a solution of certain salts, he re- 
quires a rap to make him crystallize. A great many 



8 Lessons in Life. 

mean things are done in the family for which moods are 
put forward as the excuse, when the moods themselves 
are the most inexcusable things of all. A man or a 
woman in tolerable health has no moral right to indulge 
in an unpleasant mood, or to depend upon moods for 
the performance of the duties of life. If a bad mood 
come to such persons as these, it is to be shaken off 
by a direct effort of the will, under all circumstances. 

There are moods, however, for which men are not 
responsible, and the parent of these is sickness — the fee- 
ble or inharmonious movements of the body. When my 
little boy wakes in the morning, his smile is as bright as 
the pencil of sunlight that lies across his coverlet ; but 
when evening comes, he is peevish and fretful. The 
little limbs are weary, and the mood is produced by 
weariness. So my friend with a harassing cough is in 
a melancholy mood, and my bilious friend is in a severe 
and savage mood, or in a dark and gloomy mood, or 
in a petulant mood, or in a fearful or foreboding mood. 
In truth, bile is the prolific mother of moods. The 
stream of life flows through the biliary duct. When 
that is obstructed, life is obstructed. When the 
golden tide sets back upon the liver, it is like back- 
water under a mill ; it stops the driving-wheel. Bile 
spoils the peace of families, breaks off friendships, cuts 
off man from communion with his Maker, colors whole 
systems of theology, transforms brains into putty, and 
destroys the comfort of a jaundiced world. The fa- 



Moods and Frames of Mind. g 

mous Dr. Abernethy had his hobby, as most famous 
men have ; and this hobby was " blue pill and ipecac, " 
which he prescribed for every thing, with the supposi- 
tion, I presume, that all disease has its origin in the 
liver. Most moods, I am sure, have their birth in the 
derangements of this important organ ; and while the 
majority of them can be controlled, there are others 
for which their victims are not responsible. There are 
men who cannot insult me, because I will not take an 
insult from them any more than I would from a man in- 
toxicated. When their bile starts, I am sure they will 
come to me and apologize. 

We all have acquaintances who are men of moods. 
W T henever we meet them, we try to determine which 
of their moods is dominant, that we may know how to 
treat them. If the severe mood be on, we would just 
as soon think of whistling at a funeral as indulging in a 
jest ; but if the cloud be off, we have a sprightly friend 
and a pleasant time with him. Goldsmith's pedagogue 
was a man of moods, and his pupils understood them. 

"A man severe he was, and stern to view; 
I knew him well, and every truant knew : 
Well had the boding tremblers learned to trace 
The days disasters in his morning face ; 
Full well they laughed with counterfeited glee 
At all his jokes, for many a joke had he ; 
Full well the busy whisper, circling round, 
Conveyed the dismal tidings when he frowned." 



io Lessons in Life. 

While I maintain that a man can generally be the mas- 
ter of his moods, I am very well aware that but few 
men are ; and it is wise for us to know how to deal 
with them. The secret of many a man's success in the 
world resides in his insight into the moods of men, and 
his tact in dealing with them, Modern Christian phi- 
lanthropists tell us that if we would do good to the 
soul of a starving child, we must first put food into his 
mouth, and comfortable clothing upon his body. This, 
by way of manifesting a practical interest in his wel- 
fare, and paving our way to his heart by a form of 
kindness which he can thoroughly appreciate. But 
there is more in such an act than this, — we change his 
mood. From a mood of despair or discouragement, 
we translate him into a mood of cheerfulness and hope- 
fulness ; and then we have a soul to deal with that is 
surrounded by the conditions of improvement. There 
is much more than divine duty and Christian forgive- 
ness in the injunction : "If thine enemy hunger, feed 
him ; if he thirst, give him drink." The highest wis- 
dom would dictate such a policy for changing his mood, 
and bringing him into a condition in which he could 
entertain a sense of his meanness. 

It is curious to see how much fulness and emptiness 
of stomach have to-do with moods. A business man 
who has been at work hard all day, will enter his house 
for dinner as crabbed as a hungry bear — crabbed be- 
cause he is as hungry as a hungry bear. The wife 



Moods and Frames of Mind. 1 1 

understands the mood, and, while she says little to 
him, is careful not to have the dinner delayed. In the 
mean time, the children watch him cautiously, and do 
not tease him with questions. When the soup is gulped, 
and he leans back and wipes his mouth, there is an evi- 
dent relaxation, and his wife ventures to ask for the 
news. When the roast beef is disposed of, she pre- 
sumes upon gossip, and possibly upon a jest ; and when, 
at last, the dessert is spread upon the table, all hands 
are merry, and the face of the husband and father, which 
entered the house so pinched and savage and sharp, be- 
comes soft and full and beaming as the face of the 
round summer moon. Children are very sensitive to the 
influence of hunger ; and often when we think that we 
are witnessing some fearful proof of the total depravity 
of human nature in a young child, we are only witness- 
ing the natural expression of a desire for bread and milk. 
The politicians and all that class of men who have axes 
to grind, understand this business very thoroughly. If 
a measure is to be carried through, and any man wishes 
to secure votes for it, he gives a dinner. If a man 
wishes for a profitable contract, he gives a dinner. If 
he is up for a fat office, he gives a dinner. If it is de- 
sirable that a pair of estranged friends be brought to- 
gether, and reconciled to each other, they are invited 
to a dinner. If hostile interests are to be harmonized, 
and clashing measures compromised, and divergent 
forces brought into parallelism, all must be effected by 



12 Lessons in Life. 

means of a dinner. A good dinner produces a good 
mood, — at least, it produces an impressible mood. 
The will relaxes wonderfully under the influence of 
iced champagne ; and canvas-backs are remarkable 
softeners of prejudice. The daughter of Herodias 
took Herod at a great disadvantage, when she came in 
and danced before him and his friends at his birthday- 
supper, and secured the head of John the Baptist. No 
one, I presume, believes that if she had undertaken to 
dance before him when he was hungry, she would have 
had the offer of a gift equal to the half of his kingdom. 
It is more than likely that, under any other circum- 
stances, she would have been told to " sit down and 
show less." It is by means of food and drink, and 
various entertainments of the senses, that moods are 
manufactured, and used as media of approach to the 
wills which it is desirable to bend or direct. 

I have found moods to be very poor tests of charac- 
ter. Having cut through the crust of a most forbidding 
mood, produced by bodily derangement or constant 
and pressing labor of the brain, I have often found a 
heart full of all the sweetest and richest traits of hu- 
manity. I have found, too, that some natures know 
the door that leads through the moods of other natures. 
There are men who never present their moody side to 
me. My neighbor enters their presence and finds them 
severe in aspect, hard in feeling, and abrupt in speech. 
I go in immediately after, and open the door right 



Moods and Frames of Mind. 13 

through that mood, into the genial good heart that sits 
behind it, and the door always flies open when I come. 
I know men whose mood is usually exceedingly pleas- 
ant. There is a glow of health upon their faces. Their 
words are musical to women and children. They are 
cheerful and chipper and sunshiny, and not easily 
moved to anger ; and yet I know them to be liars and 
full of selfishness. Under their sweet mood, which 
sound health and a not over-sensitive conscience and 
the satisfactions of sense engender, they conceal hearts 
that are as false and foul as any that illustrate the reign 
of sin in human nature. Many a Christian has times of 
feeling that God is in a special manner smiling upon 
him, and communing with him, and filling him with the 
peace and joy that only flow from heavenly fountains, 
when the truth is that he is only in a good mood. He is 
well, all the machinery of his mind and body is playing 
harmoniously, and, of course, he feels well, and that is 
all there is about it. He is not a better Christian than 
he was when he slipped into the mood, and no better 
than he will be when he slips out of it. If he really be 
a good Christian, his moods operate like clouds and 
blue sky. The sun shines all the time, and the cloudy 
moods only hide it ; — they do not extinguish it. 

There are many sad cases of insanity of a religious 
character which originate in moods. A man, through 
a period of health, has a bright and cheerful religious 
experience. The world looks pleasant to him, the 



14 Lessons in Life. 

heavens smile kindly upon him, and the Divine Spirit 
witnesses with his own that he is at peace and in har- 
mony with God. Joy thrills him as he greets the morn- 
ing light, and peace nestles upon his heart as he lies 
down to his nightly rest. He feels in his soul the influx 
of spiritual life from the Great Source of all life, as he 
opens it in worship and in prayer. But at length there 
comes a change. A strange sadness creeps into his 
heart. The sky that was once so bright has become 
dark. The prayer that once rose as easily as incense 
upon the still morning air, straight toward heaven, will 
not rise at all, but settles like smoke upon him, and 
fills his eyes with tears. Something seems to have 
come between him and his God. Strange, accusing 
voices are heard within him. However deep the 
agony that moves him, he cannot rend the cloud that 
interposes between him and his Maker. This, now, is 
simply a mood produced by ill health ; and I hope that 
everybody who reads this will remember it. Remem- 
ber that God never changes, that a man's moods are 
constantly changing, and that when a man earnestly 
seeks for spiritual peace, and cannot find it, and thinks 
that he has committed the unpardonable sin without 
knowing it, he is bilious, and needs medical treat- 
ment. Alas ! what multitudes of sad souls have walked 
out of this hopeless mood into a life-long insanity, 
when all they needed in the first place, perhaps, was 
a dose of blue pills, or half a dozen strings of tenpins, 



Moods and Frames of Mind. 15 

or a sea-voyage sufficiently rough for " practical pur- 
poses. " 

This subject I find to be abundantly prolific, and I 
see that I have been able to do hardly more than to 
hint at its more prominent aspects. It seems to me 
that moods only need to be studied more, and to be 
better understood, to bring them very much under the 
control of our wills. A great deal is learned when we 
know what a mood is, and know that we are subject to 
varying frames of mind, resulting from causes which 
affect our health. If I know that I am impatient and 
cross because I am hungry, then I know how to get rid 
of my mood, and how to manage it until I do get rid 
of it. If I feel unable to labor, not because I am feeble, 
but because I am not in the mood, then I have the 
mood in my hands, to be dealt with intelligently. If 
my reason tell me that it is only a mood that hides 
from me the face of my Maker, my reason will also tell 
me that my first business is to get rid of my mood, and 
that my will must approach the work, directly or in- 
directly. We are always and necessarily in some mood 
of mind — in some condition of passion or feeling. It is 
the intensification and the dominant influence of moods 
that are to be guarded against or destroyed. Moods 
are dangerous only when they obscure reason, destroy 
self-control, and disturb the mental poise, and become 
the media of false impressions from all the life around 
us and within us. 



LESSON II. 

BODILY IMPERFECTIONS AND IMPEDIMENTS. 

"I that am. curtailed of this fair proportion, 
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature, 
Deformed, unfinished, sent before my time 
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up." 

— Richard III. 
"None can be called deformed but the unkind." 

— Shakspeare. 
* 4, Tis true, his nature may with faults abound ; 
But who will cavil when the heart is sound ? " 

—Stephen Montague. 

IT is a bright June morning. The fresh grass is 
loaded with dew, every bead of which sparkles in 
the light of the brilliant sun. A big, yellow-shouldered 
bee comes booming through the open window, and 
buzzes up and down my room, and threatens my shrink- 
ing ears, and then dives through the window again ; 
and his form recedes and his hum dies away, as if it 
were the note of a reed-stop in the " swell " of a church 
organ. There is such confusion in the songs of the 
birds, that I can hardly select the different notes, so as 



Bodily Imperfections and Impediments, 17 

to name their owners. There is a great deal of bird- 
singing that is simply what a weaver would call " fill- 
ing." Robins and bobolinks and blue-birds and sundry 
other favorites furnish the warp, and color and charac- 
terize the tapestry of a flowing, vocal morning ; while 
the little, gray-backed multitude work in the neutral 
ground tones, and bring the sweeter and more elabo- 
rate notes into beautiful relief. Thus, with a little aid 
of imagination, I get up some very exquisite fabrics — 
vocal silks and satins : — robins on a field of chickadees ; 
bobolinks and thrushes alternately on a hit-or-miss 
ground of blackbirds, wrens, and pewees. Into the 
midst of all this delicious confusion there breaks a note 
that belongs to another race of creatures ; and as I 
look from my window, and see the singer, my eyes fill 
with tears. It is a little boy, possibly twelve years 
old, though he looks younger, walking with a crutch. 
One withered limb dangles as he goes. He is a cripple 
for life ; yet his face is as bright and cheerful as the 
face of the morning itself ; and what do you think he is 
singing? " Hail Columbia, happy land, " at the top of 
his lungs ! The birds are merrily wheeling over his 
head, and diving through the air, and moving here and 
there as freely as the wind, yet not one among them 
carries a lighter heart than that which he is jerking 
along by the side of the little crutch. 

As I see how cheerfully he bears the burden of his 
hopeless halting, there comes back to me the story of 



1 8 Lessons in Life. 

the lame lord who sang a different sort of song — the 
lame lord who died at Missolonghi, and whose friend 
Trelawny — human jackal that he was — stole to his bed- 
side after the breath had left his body, and examined 
his clubbed feet, and then went away and wrote about 
them. Here was a man with regal gifts of mind — a 
poet of splendid genius — a titled aristocrat — a man ad- 
mired and praised wherever the English language was 
read — a man who knew that he held within himself the 
power to make his name immortal — a man with wealth 
sufficient for all grateful luxuries — yet with clubbed 
feet ; and those feet ! Ah ! how they embittered and 
spoiled that man of magnificent achievements and sub- 
lime possibilities ! It would appear from the disgusting 
narrative of Mr. Trelawny, that he was in reality the 
only man who had ever seen Byron's feet. Those feet 
had been kept so closely hidden, or so cunningly dis- 
guised, that nobody had known their real deformity ; 
and the poor lord who had carried them through his 
thirty-six years of life, had done it in constantly tor- 
mented and mortified pride. Those misshapen organs 
had an important agency in making him a misanthropic, 
morbidly sensitive, unhappy, desperate man. When 
he sang, he did not forget them ; and the poor fools who 
turned down their shirt-collars, and imitated his songs, 
and thought they were inspired by his winged genius, 
had under them only a pair of halting, clubbed feet. 
There is a class of unfortunate men and women in 



Bodily Imperfections and Impediments. 19 

the world to whom the boy and the bard have intro- 
duced us. They are not all lame : but they all think they 
have cause to be dissatisfied with the bodies God has 
given them. Perhaps they are simply ugly, and are 
aware that no one can look in their faces with other 
thought than that they are ugly. Now it is a pleasant 
thing to have a pleasant face, and an agreeable form. 
It is pleasant for a man to be large, well-shaped, and 
good-looking, and it is unpleasant for him to be small, 
and to carry an ill-shaped form and an ugly face. It is 
pleasant for a woman to feel that she has personal attrac- 
tions for those around her, and it is unpleasant for her to 
feel that no man can ever turn his eyes admiringly upon 
her. A misshapen limb, a hump in the back, a withered 
arm, a shortened leg, a clubbed foot, a hare -lip, an un- 
wieldy corpulence, a hideous lameness, a bald head — all 
these are unpleasant possessions, and all these, I sup- 
pose, give their possessors, first and last, a great deal 
of pain. Then there is the taint of an unpopular blood, 
that a whole race carry with them as a badge of humili- 
ation. I have heard of Africans who declared that 
they would willingly go through the pain of being 
skinned alive, if, at the close of the operation, they 
could become white men. There are men of genius, 
with plenty of white blood in their veins — with only a 
trace of Africa in their faces — whose lives are embit- 
tered by that trace ; and who know that the pure 
Anglo-Saxon, if he follows his instincts, will say to him : 



20 Lessons in Life. 

" Thus far," — (through a limited range of relations,) — 
"'but no further." 

From the depths of my soul I pity a man or woman 
who bears about an irremediable bodily deformity, or 
the mark of the blood of a humiliated race. I pity any 
human being who carries around a body that he feels to 
be in any sense an unpleasant one to those whom he 
meets. I pity the deformed man, and the maimed man, 
and the terribly ugly man, and the black man, and the 
white man with black blood in him, because he usually 
feels that these things bear with them a certain degree 
of humiliation. I pity the man who is not able to stand 
out in the broad sunlight, with other men, and to feel 
that he has as goodly a frame and as fine blood and 
as pleasant a presence as the average of those whom he 
sees around him. I do not wonder at all that many of 
these persons become soured and embittered and. 
jealous. A sensitive mind, dwelling long upon mis- 
fortunes of this peculiar character, will inevitably be- 
come morbid ; and multitudes of humbler men than 
Lord Byron have cursed their fate as bitterly as he, and 
have even lifted their eyes to blaspheme the Being who 
made them. 

The two instances which I have mentioned show us 
that there are two ways of taking misfortunes of this 
character ; and one of them seems to be a good deal 
better than the other. Between the boy who ignored the 
withered leg and the crutch, and the proud poet who per- 



Bodily Imperfections and Impediments, 21 

mitted a slight personal deformity to darken his whole life, 
there is a distance like that between heaven and earth. 

I believe in the law of compensation. Human lot is, 
on the whole, well averaged. A man does not possess 
great gifts of person and of mind without drawbacks 
somewhere. Either great duties are imposed upon him, 
or great burdens are put upon his shoulders, or great 
temptations assail and harass him. Something in his 
life, at some time in his life, takes it upon itself to 
reduce his advantages to the average standard. Na- 
ture gave Byron clubbed feet, but with those feet she 
gave him a genius whose numbers charmed the world 
— a genius which multitudes of commonplace or weak 
men would have been glad to purchase at the price of 
almost any humiliating eccentricity of person. But they 
were obliged to content themselves with excellent feet, 
and brains of the common kind and calibre. Providence 
had withered the little boy's leg, but the loudest song 
I have heard from a boy in a twelvemonth came from 
his lips, as he limped along alone in the open street. 
The cheerful heart in his bosom was a great compen- 
sation for the withered leg ; and beyond this the boy 
had reason for singing over the fact that he was forever 
released from military duty, and fireman's duty, and all 
racing about in the service of other people. There are 
individual cases of misfortune in which it is hard to de- 
tect the compensating good, but these we must call the 
" exceptions " which " prove the rule." 



22 Lessons in Life. 

But the best of all compensation for natural defects 
and deformities, is that which comes in the form of a 
peculiar love. The mother of a poor, misshapen, idiotic 
boy, will, though she have half a score **)f bright and 
beautiful children besides, entertain for him a peculiar 
affection. He may not be able, in his feeble-minded- 
ness, to appreciate it, but her heart brims with tender- 
ness for him. The delicate morsel is reserved for him ; 
and, if he be a sufferer, the softest pillow and the ten- 
derest nursing will be his. A love will be bestowed 
upon him which gold could not buy, and which no 
beauty of person and no brilliancy of natural gifts could 
possibly awaken. It is thus with every case of defect 
or eccentricity of person. So sure as the mother of a 
child sees in that child's person any reason for the 
world to regard it with contempt or aversion, does she 
treat it with peculiar tenderness ; as if she were com- 
missioned by God — as indeed she is — to make up to it 
in the best coinage that which the world will certainly 
neglect to bestow. 

With the world at large, however, there are certain 
conditions on which this variety of compensation is ren- 
dered ; and a man who would have compensation for 
defects of person, must accept these conditions, or fur- 
nish them. Such a man as Lord Byron would have 
been offended by pity. To have been commiserated on 
his misfortune, would have made him exceedingly angry. 
He would not allow himself to be treated as an unfortu- 



Bodily Imperfections and Impediments. 23 

nate man. He bound up his feet, and made efforts to 
walk that ended in intense pain, rather than appear the 
lame man that he really was. Of course, there was no 
compensation in the tender pity and affectionate consid- 
eration of the world for him ; nor is there any for the 
sad unfortunates who inherit and exercise his spirit. 
But for all those who accept their life with all its condi- 
tions, in a cheerful spirit, who give up their pride, who 
take their bodies as God formed them, and make the 
best of them, there is abundant compensation in the af- 
fection of the world. A cheerful spirit, exercised in 
weakness, infirmity, calamity — any sort of misfortune — 
is just as sure to awaken a peculiarly affectionate inter- 
est in all observers, as a lighted lamp is to illuminate 
the objects around it. I know of men and women who 
are the favorites of a whole neighborhood — nay, a whole 
town — because they are cheerful, and courageous, and 
self-respectful under misfortune ; and I know of those 
who are as much dreaded as a pestilence, because they 
will not accept their lot — because they grow bitter and 
jealous — and because they will persist in taunts and 
complaints. 

The number of those who are, or who consider them- 
selves, unfortunate in their physical conformation, is 
larger than the most of us suppose. I presume that at 
least one-half of the readers of this essay are any thing 
but well satisfied with the " tabernacle " in which they 
reside. One man wishes he were a little larger ; one 



24 Lessons in Life. 

woman wishes she were a little smaller ; one does not 
like her complexion, or the color of her eyes and hair 
one has a nose too large ; another has a nose too small 
one has round shoulders ; another has a low forehead 
and so every one becomes a critic of his or her style of 
structure. When we find a man or a woman who is ab- 
solutely faultless in form and features, we usually find a 
fool. I do not remember that I ever met a very hand- 
some man or woman, who was not as vain and shallow 
as a peacock. I recently met a magnificent woman of 
middle age at a railroad station. She was surrounded 
by all those indescribable somethings and nothings 
which mark the rich and well-bred traveller, and her 
face was queenly — not sweet and pretty like a doll's face 
— but handsome and stylish, and strikingly impressive, 
so that no man could look at her once without turning 
to look again ; yet I had not been in her presence a 
minute, before I found, to my utter disgust, that the old 
creature was as vain of her charms as a spoiled girl, 
and gloried in the attention which she was conscious 
her face everywhere attracted. It would seem as if na- 
ture, in making up mankind, had always been a little 
short of materials, so that, if special attention were be- 
stowed upon the form and face, the brain suffered ; and 
if the brain received particular attention, why, then 
there was something lacking in the body. 

This large class of malcontents generally find some 
way of convincing themselves, however, that they are 



Bodily Imperfections and Impediments. 25 

as good-looking as the average of mankind. They 
make a good deal of some special points of beauty, and 
imagine that these quite overshadow their defects. Still, 
there is a portion of them who can never do^ this ; and 
I think of them with a sadness which it is impossible 
for me to express. For a homely — even an ugly man — 
I have no pity to spare. I never saw one so ugly yet, 
that if he had brains and a heart, he could not find a 
beautiful woman sensible enough to marry him. But 
for the hopelessly plain and homely sisters — "these 
tears ! " There is a class of women who know that they 
possess in their persons no attractions for men — that 
their faces are homely, that their frames are ill-formed, 
that their carriage is clumsy, and that, whatever may be 
their gifts of mind, no man can have the slightest de- 
sire to possess their persons. That there are compen- 
sations for these women, I have no doubt, but many of 
them fail to find them. Many of them feel that the 
sweetest sympathies of life must be repressed, and 
that there is a world of affection from which they must 
remain shut out forever. It is hard for a woman to feel 
that her person is not pleasing — harder than for a man 
to feel thus. I would tell why, if it were necessary — 
for there is a bundle of very interesting philosophy tied 
up in the matter — but I will content myself with stating 
the fact, and permitting my readers to reason about it 
as they will. 

Now, if a homely woman, soured and discouraged by 
2 



26 Lessons in Life. 

her lot, becomes misanthropic and complaining, she 
will be as little loved as she is admired ; but if she ac- 
cepts her lot good-naturedly, makes up her mind to be 
happy, and is determined to be agreeable in all her re- 
lations to society, she will be everywhere surrounded 
by loving and sympathetic hearts, and find herself a 
greater favorite than she would be were she beautiful. 
A woman who is entirely beyond the reach of the jeal- 
ousy of her own sex, is an exceedingly fortunate woman ; 
and if personal homeliness has won for her this immu- 
nity, then homeliness has given her much to be thankful 
for. A homely woman who ignores her face and form, 
cultivates her mind and manners, good-naturedly gives 
up all pretension, and exhibits in all her life a true and 
a pure heart, will have friends enough to compensate 
her entirely for the loss of a husband. Friendship is 
unmindful of faces, in the selection of its objects, even 
if love be somewhat particular, and, sometimes, fool- 
ishly fastidious. 

Life is altogether too precious a gift to be thrown 
away. A man who would permit a field to be over- 
grown with weeds and thorns simply because it would 
not naturally produce roses, would be very foolish, par- 
ticularly if the ground should only need cultivation to 
enable it to yield abundantly of corn. Far be it from 
me to depreciate physical symmetry and personal come- 
liness. They are gifts of God, and they are very good ; 
but there are better things in this world than a good 



Bodily Imperfections and Impediments. 27 

face, and better things than the admiration which a good 
face wins. I am more and more convinced, as the years 
pass away, that the choicest thing this world has for a 
man is affection — not any special variety of affection, 
but the approval, the sympathy, and the devotion of true 
hearts. It is not necessary that this affection comes 
from the great and the powerful. If it be genuine, that 
is all the heart asks. It does not criticize and graduate 
the value of the fountains from which it springs. It is 
at these fountains particularly that the unfortunates of 
the world are permitted to drink. They have only to 
accept cheerfully the conditions of their lot, and to give 
free and full play to all that is good and generous in 
them, to secure, in an unusual degree, the love of those 
into whose intimate society Providence has thrown them. 
It is stated by Dr. Livingstone, the celebrated ex- 
plorer of Africa, that the blow of a lion's paw upon his 
shoulder, which was so severe as to break his arm, com- 
pletely annihilated fear ; and he suggests that it is pos- 
sible that Providence has mercifully arranged, that all 
those beasts that prey upon life shall have power to de- 
stroy the sting of death in the animals which are their 
natural victims. I do not believe that this power is 
mercifully assigned to beasts of prey alone, but that the 
misfortunes that assail our limbs and forms, in whatever 
shape and at whatever time they may come, bring with 
them something which lightens the blow, or obviates the 
pain, if we will accept it. There is a calm conscious- 



28 Lessons in Life. 

ness in every soul, however harshly the lion's paw may 
fall upon the body which it inhabits, that it is itself in- 
vulnerable — that whatever may be the condition of the 
body, the soul cannot be injured by physical forms or 
forces. 

Physical calamity never comes with the power to ex- 
tinguish that which is essential to the highest manhood 
and womanhood, and never fails to bring with it a 
motive for the adjustment of the soul to its conditions. 
The little boy whose " Hail Columbia" has been ring- 
ing in my ears all day, accepted the conditions of his 
life, and the sting of his calamity has departed. It is 
pleasant to say to him, and to all the brotherhood and 
sisterhood of ugliness and lameness, that there is every 
reason to believe that there is no such thing in heaven 
as a one-legged or a club-footed soul — no such thing as 
an ugly or a misshapen soul — no such thing as a blind 
or a deaf soul — no such thing as a soul with tainted 
blood in its veins ; and that out of these imperfect 
bodies will spring spirits of consummate perfection and 
angelic beauty — a beauty chastened and enriched by 
the humiliations that were visited upon their earthly 
habitation. 



LESSON III. 

ANIMAL CONTENT. 

'* By sports like these are all their cares beguiled ; 
The sports of children satisfy the child." 

— Goldsmith. 
" Ay, give me back the joyous hours 
When I, myself, was ripening too ; 
When song, the fount, flung up its showers 
Of beauty, ever fresh and new." 

— Goethe's Faust. 

I HAVE been watching a family of kittens, engaged 
in their exquisitely graceful play. Near them lay 
their mother, stretched at her length upon the flagging, 
taking her morning nap, and warming herself in the 
sun. She had eaten her breakfast, (provided by no care 
of her own, but at my expense,) had seen her little fam- 
ily fed, and having nothing further to attend to, had 
gone off into a doze. What a blessed freedom from 
care ! Think of a family of four children, with no 
frocks to be made for them, no hair to brush, no shoes 
to provide, no socks to knit and mend, no school-books 
to buy, and no nurse ! Think of a living being with the 



30 Lessons in Life. 

love of offspring in her bosom, and a multitude of mar- 
vellous instincts in her nature, yet knowing nothing of 
God, thinking not of the future, without a hope or an 
expectation, or a doubt or a fear, passing straight on to 
annihilation ! At the threshold of this destiny the little 
kittens were carelessly playing ; and they are doubtless 
still playing, while I write. They have no lessons to 
learn, they do not have to go to Sunday-school, they 
entertain no prejudices, except against dogs which occa- 
sionally dodge into the yard ; and I judge by the famil- 
iar way in which they play with their mother's ears, and 
pounce upon her tail, that they are not in any degree 
oppressed by the sense of the respect due to a parent. 
Cats and kittens will eat, and frolic, and sleep, through 
their brief life, and then they will curl up in some dark 
corner and die. 

I remember that in one of the late Mr. Joseph C. 
Neal's " Charcoal Sketches," he puts into the mouth of 
a very sad and seedy loafer the expression of a wish 
that he were a pig, and the statement of the reasons for 
the wish. These reasons, as I recall them, related to the 
freedom of the pig from the peculiar trials and troubles 
of humanity. Pigs do not have to work for a living ; 
they undertake no enterprizes, and of course fail in 
none ; they eat and sleep through a period of months, 
and then come the knife and a grunt, and that is the 
last of them. Now I suppose this thought of Mr. NeaPs 
loafer has been shared by millions of men. Not that 



Animal Content. 31 

everybody has at some time in his life wished he were a 
pig, but that nearly everybody who has had his share of 
the troubles and responsibilities of life, has looked upon 
simple animal carelessness and content with a certain 
degree of envy. It is not necessary to go among brutes 
for instances of this animal content. It can be found 
among men. Who does not know good-natured, igno- 
rant, healthy fellows, who will work all day in the field, 
whistle all the way homeward, eat hugely of coarse food, 
sleep like logs, and take no more interest in the great 
questions which agitate the most of us, than the pigs 
they feed, and that, in return, feed them ? Who has 
not sighed, as he has seen how easily the simple wants 
of certain simple natures are supplied ? I remember 
an old man who quite unexpectedly was drafted into the 
grand jury, which sat in the county town less than ten 
miles distant from his home ; and this was the great 
event of his life. He never tired of talking about it — 
(never tired himself, I mean,) and a stranger could not 
carry on a conversation with him for five minutes, with- 
out hearing of something which occurred when "I was 
in Blanktown, on the Grand Jury." It is doubtful 
whether Napoleon ever contemplated a victory with the 
complacent satisfaction that filled my old friend when 
he alluded to his connection with " the grand jury," 
and emphasized the adjective which magnified the jury 
and glorified him. 

I confess that, when I pass through a rural town, and 



32 Lessons in Life. 

see the laborers among the corn, and the boys driving 
their cattle, and the girls busy in the dairies, and life 
passing away quietly, I cannot avoid a twinge of regret 
that it would be impossible for me to be content with 
the kind of life that I see around me, especially as I 
know that there is one kind of pleasure — negative, per- 
haps, rather than positive — which that kind of life en- 
joys, and in which I can never share. Relief from great 
responsibilities, and contentment with humble clothing, 
humble fare, humble society, humble aims and ambi- 
tions, humble means and humble labors — ah ! how 
many weary, overloaded men — how many disappointed 
hearts — have sighed for such a boon, and sighed know- 
ing they could never receive it. 

It has been the habit of poets to surround simple 
pleasures and pursuits with the golden atmosphere of 
romance, — not because they would enjoy such pleasures 
and pursuits at all, but rather because they are forever 
beyond their possession. A poet is always reaching 
toward the unattainable, and he may reach forward to 
the perfections of a life of which the best that he sees 
around him is an intimation, or backward to the animal 
content of a life as yet undisturbed by the intimation of 
something better. Bucolics are very sweet, but their 
writers do not believe in them. " A nut-brown maid," 
with bare, unconscious feet and ankles, is very pretty in 
a picture, but the man who painted her ascertained that 
she was silly, and not the most entertaining of compan- 



Animal Content. 33 

ions. The truth is, that when we have got along so far 
that we can perceive that which is poetical and pictu- 
resque in the simplest form of rustic life, we have got too 
far along to enjoy it. 

I suppose that much of the charm which simple ani- 
mal content has for us, is connected with the memories 
of childhood. We can all recall a period of our lives 
when there was joy in the consciousness of living — when 
animal life, in its spontaneous overflow, flooded all our 
careless hours with its own peculiar pleasure. The light 
was pleasant to our eyes, vigorous appetite and digestion 
made ambrosia of the homeliest fare, the simplest play 
brought delight, and life — all untried — lay spread out 
before us in one long, golden dream. We now watch 
our children at their sports, and see but little difference 
between their sources of happiness and those which sup- 
ply the kittens in their play. " Pleased with a rattle, 
tickled with a straw," they skip from pleasure to pleas- 
ure, and find delight in the impulsive exercise of their 
little powers. We were once like them. Life was once 
as fresh, and flowing, and impulsive, and objectless, as 
it is with them ; and when we are weary and oppressed 
with labor, and loaded down with responsibility, and 
filled with thoughts of the great destiny before us, we 
turn our eyes backward with a sigh for days once ours, 
but lost forever. Lost forever ! This is the romantic 
pain that fills us in all our contemplations of simple ani- 
mal content. It is lost to us, because we are lost to it. 
2* 



34 Lessons in Life, 

Like a passenger far out upon the sea, adventuring upon 
a long voyage, we look back upon the fading hills of our 
native land, and sigh to think that the breeze which 
bears us away can never bring us back. 

The question comes to us : " What is there in our 
present life to repay us for this loss ? " There are multi- 
tudes who can ask this question, and answer honestly, 
" Nothing." It is sad, but true, that countless men and 
women have never found anything in life which compen- 
sates them for the loss of the simple animal enjoyment 
and content of childhood. Sickness, perhaps, has im- 
posed upon them years of pain. Poverty has condemned 
them to labor through every waking hour to win suste- 
nance for themselves and their dependents. The heart 
has been cheated of its idol. Friends have proved false, 
and fortune fickle. Life has gone wrong through all the 
avenues of their being. Yet there are others who, while 
looking with pleasure upon the innocent sports of animal 
life, and recalling the simple joys of childhood with de- 
light, are content with the lot of manhood and woman- 
hood, and would look upon a return to their simpler age 
as the greatest calamity that could be inflicted upon 
them. With brows wrinkled by care and toil, and heads 
silvered by premature age, and great burdens upon 
heart and brain, they glory in a life within and before 
them, by the side of which the life of childhood is as 
flavorless and frivolous as that of a fly. 

I have been much impressed by a passage in the 



Animal Content. 35 

"Recreations of a Country Parson/' in which this ques- 
tion is incidentally touched upon, and so happily touched 
upon, that I cannot refrain from transcribing the whole 
passage. The writer represents himself to be seated 
upon a manger, writing upon the flat place between his 
horse's eyes, while the docile animal's nose is between 
his knees ; and it is the horse that he addresses : — 

"For you, my poor fellow-creature, I think with sorrow as I 
write here upon your head, there remains no such immortality as 
remains for me. What a difference between us ! You to your 
sixteen or eighteen years here, and then oblivion ! — I to my three- 
score and ten, and then eternity ! Yes, the difference is im- 
mense ; and it touches me to think of your life and mine, of your 
doom and mine. I know a house where, at morning and evening 
prayer, when the household assembles, among the servants there 
always walks in a shaggy little dog, who listens with the deepest 
attention and the most solemn gravity to ail that is said, and then, 
when prayers are over, goes out again with his friends. I cannot 
witness that silent procedure without being much moved by the 
sight. Ah ! my fellow-creature, this is something in which you 
have no part ! Made by the same hand, breathing the same air, 
sustained like us by food and drink, you are witnessing an act of 
ours which relates to interests that do not concern you, and of 
which you have no idea. And so here we are, you standing at 
the manger, old boy, and I sitting upon it ; the mortal and the 
immortal, close together ; your nose on my knee, my paper on 
your head ; yet with something between us broader than the 
broad Atlantic." 

Here we find one man pitying his poor, dumb, uncon- 
scious companion, and the little dog that trots in to at- 



36 Lessons in Life. 

tend the morning prayers, because their life is so brief, 
and, more particularly, because it is so insignificant. 
He recognizes the feeble likeness between himself and 
them, and appreciates, also, the tremendous difference. 
He does not think that he would be glad to exchange his 
lot of labor and care for their carelessness and content, 
but, reaching forward to grasp the hand of an immortal 
destiny, he sorrows that he must leave his dumb ser- 
vants and companions behind him. 

And this is the normal view of the question. We rise 
out of semi-conscious infancy into a life of the senses, 
which goes on to perfection in our childhood. We come 
into a state in which the mechanism of the body enjoys 
its freest play, in which the senses imbibe their sweetest 
satisfactions, and in which life either swells into irre- 
pressible overflowings, or subsides into careless content. 
Looking at her children at this period of their life, many 
a mother has said, " Let them play while they can ; let 
them be merry while they may ; for they are seeing their 
happiest days." But this animal life is not all. In its 
perfection it is very beautiful, and it is good because 
God made it ; but it is only the coarse basis upon which 
rises a shaft, whiter than marble — wrought with divine 
devices — crowned by the light of Heaven. It is only 
those who have failed to secure a distinct perception of 
the highest aspect of human life, and of that which 
makes it characteristically human life, who can say to a 
child that he is seeing " his happiest days." 



Animal Content. 37 

I remember with entire distinctness the moment 
when the consciousness possessed me that my child- 
hood was transcended by dawning manhood, and I can 
never forget the pang that moment brought me. It 
was on a bright, moonlight night, in midwinter, when 
my mates, boisterous with life, were engaged in their 
usual games in the snow, and I had gone out expecting 
to share in their enjoyment. I had not played, or 
rather tried to play, five minutes, before I found that 
there was nothing in the play for me — that I had abso- 
lutely exhausted play as the grand pursuit of my life. 
Never since has the wild laugh of boyhood sounded so 
vacant and hollow, as it did to me that night. In an 
instant, the invisible line was crossed which separated 
a life of purely animal enjoyment from a life of moral 
motive and responsibility, and intellectual action and en- 
terprise. The old had passed away, and I had entered 
that which was new ; and I turned my steps homeward, 
leaving behind me all my companions, to spend a quiet 
evening in the chimney-corner, and dream of the realm 
that was opening before me. Such a moment as this 
comes really, though not always consciously, to every 
man and woman. To-day we are children ; to-morrow 
we are not. To-day we stand in life's vestibule ; to- 
morrow we are in the temple, awed by the sweep of 
the arches over us, humbled by the cross that fronts us, 
and smitten with mysteries that breathe upon us from 
the choir, or gaze at us from the flaming windows. 



38 Lessons in Life. 

Manhood and womanhood have their infancy en- 
tirely distinct from the infancy of childhood. The 
child is born into the world a simple, animal life — less 
helpful than a lamb, or a calf, or a kitten. There is no 
power in it, and but little of instinct. There is no 
form of life, bursting caul or shell, that awakes in vital 
air to such stupid, vacant helplessness, as a baby. It is 
out of this lump of clay, with its bones only half hard- 
ened, and its muscles little more than pulp, and its 
brain no more intelligent than an uncooked dumpling, 
that childhood is to be made. And this childhood con- 
sists of little more than a well-developed animal organ- 
ism. Nature keeps the child playing — makes it play 
in the open air — impels it to bring into free and joyous 
use all the powers of its little frame — and when that is 
done, and the procreative faculty has crowned all, the 
child is born again, and comes into a new infancy — the 
infancy of manhood and womanhood. Here a new life 
opens. That which gave satisfaction before, gives sat- 
isfaction no longer. Love takes new and deeper chan- 
nels. Ambition fixes its eye upon other and higher 
objects. Fresh motives address the soul, and urge it 
into new enterprises. Great cares and responsibilities 
settle slowly down upon its shoulders, and it braces 
itself up to endure them. It apprehends God and its 
relations to. Him, and to its fellows ; it confronts des- 
tiny ; it arms itself for the conflicts of life ; it prepares 
for the struggle which it knows will issue in a grateful 



Animal Content. 39 

success or a sad disappointment ; in short, it grows 
from man's infancy into man's full estate. 

Now the reason 'why a mother looks with a sigh 
upon her children, and says that they are seeing the 
happiest days of their life, is that she has never become 
a true woman. She has never grown out of the infancy 
of her womanhood. She has never comprehended what 
a glorious thing it is to be a woman — she has not com- 
prehended what it is to be a woman at all. What can 
be that woman's ideas of life, who thinks and declares 
that the happiest moments of her experience were those 
which were filled with the frolic of animal life ? If I 
felt like this, I should w r ish that my children had been 
born rabbits, or squirrels, or lambs, or kittens, because 
they, having enjoyed the pleasures of the animal, will 
never awake to the woes of another type of life. The 
real reason why any man sings from the heart, 

"O, would I were a boy again, " 
is, that he is either painfully conscious of the loss of the 
purity of his boyhood, or has the cowardly disposition 
to shirk the responsibilities of his life. The romantic 
regard which we all entertain for the simple animal 
content and joy of childhood, is a very different thing 
from this. It was Mr. Neal's loafer that really wished he 
were a pig ; and it is a loafer always that would retire 
from a man's duties and estate, into the content either 
of childhood or kittenhood. 

It is very natural that a man should be blinded and 



40 Lessons in Life. 

pained by passing from a shaded room into dazzling 
sunlight. It is a serious thing to leap from a luxurious, 
enervating warm bath into cold water. All sudden 
transitions are shocking ; and God has contrived the 
transitions of our lives so that they shall be mainly 
gradual. It is not to be wondered at that many men 
and women, by having the responsibility of men and 
women thrust upon them too early, are shocked, and 
look back upon the shady places they have left, and 
long to rest their eyes there. It is not strange that 
men recoil from a plunge into the world's cold waters, 
and long to creep back into the warm bath from which 
they have suddenly risen. But that man or woman, 
having fully passed into the estate of man or woman, 
should desire to become a child again, is impossible. 
It is only the half-developed, the badly developed, the 
imperfectly nurtured, the mean-spirited, and the demor- 
alized, who look back to the innocence, the helpless- 
ness, and the simple animal joy and content of child- 
hood with genuine regret for their loss. I want no better 
evidence that a person's life is regarded by himself as 
a failure, than that furnished by his honest willingness 
to be restored to his childhood. When a man is ready 
to relinquish the power of his mature reason, his strength 
and skill for self-support, the independence of his will 
and life, his bosom companion and children, his interest 
in the stirring affairs of his time, his part in deciding 
the great questions which agitate his age and nation, 



Animal Content. 41 

his intelligent apprehension of the relations which exist 
between himself and his Maker, and his rational hope 
of immortality — if he have one — for the negative 
animal content, and frivolous enjoyments of a child, he 
does not deserve the name of a man ; — he is a weak, 
unhealthy, broken-down creature, or a base poltroon. 

Yet I know there are those who will read this sentence 
with tears, and with complaint. I know there are those 
whose existence has been a long struggle with sickness 
and trial — whose lives have been crowded with great 
griefs and disappointments — who sit in darkness and 
impotency while the world rolls by them. They have 
seen no joy and felt no content since childhood, and 
many of them look with genuine pity upon children, be- 
cause the careless creatures do not know into what a 
heritage of sin and sorrow they are entering. I have 
only to say to them, that the noblest exhibitions of man- 
hood and womanhood I have ever seen, or the world 
has ever known, have been among their number. A 
woman with the hope of heaven in her eyes, incorrupti- 
ble virtue in her heart, and honesty in every endeavor, 
has smiled serenely, a million times in this world, while 
her life and all its earthly expectations were in ruins. 
Patient sufferers upon beds of pain have forgotten 
childhood years ago, and, feeding their souls on prayer, 
have looked forward with unutterable joy to the transi- 
tion from womanhood to angelhood. Men, utterly for- 
saken by friends — contemned, derided, proscribed, per- 



42 Lessons in Life. 

secuted — have stood by their convictions with joyful 
heroism and calm content. Nay, great multitudes have 
marched with songs upon their tongues to the rack and 
the stake. The noblest spectacle the world affords is that 
of a man or woman, rising superior to sorrow and suffer- 
ing — transforming sorrow and suffering into nutriment — 
accepting those conditions of their life which Providence 
prescribes, and building themselves up into an estate from 
whose summit the step is short to a glorified humanity. 

Before me hangs the portrait of an old man — the 
only man I ever loved with a devotion that has never 
faded, though long years have passed away since he 
died. His calm blue eyes look down upon me, and I 
look into them, and through them I look into a golden 
memory — into a life of self-denial — into a meek, toiling, 
honest, heroic Christian manhood — into an uncomplain- 
ing spirit— into a grateful heart — into a soul that never 
sighed over a lost joy, though all his earthly enterprises 
miscarried. The tracery of care and of sickness is upon 
his haggard features, but I see in them, and in the soul 
which they represent to me, the majesty of manliness. 
While I look, the kittens still play at the door, and the 
noise of shouting children is in the street ; but ah ! how 
shallow is the life they represent, compared with that 
of which this dumb canvas tells me ! It is better to be 
a man or a woman, than to be a child. It is better to 
be an angel than to be either. Let us look forward — 
never backward. 



LESSON IV. 

REPRODUCTION IN KIND, 

" Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." 

— St. Paul to the Galatians. 

" Ye shall know them by their fruits : Do men gather grapes of thorns, 
or figs of thistles?" — St. Matthew's Gospel. 

IT was fitting that one of the most characteristic and 
beautiful laws of life should be announced in the 
opening chapter of the Holy Bible. It was clothed in 
the form of an ordinance, as became it : " Let the earth 
bring forth the living creature after his kind, and every- 
thing that creepeth upon the earth, after his kind." 
From that day to this, every living thing — beast, bird 
and insect, tree, shrub and plant — has produced after 
its kind. It is a law that runs through all animal and 
vegetable life. Each family in the great world of living 
forms was created for a special purpose, and was in- 
tended to remain pure and distinctive until the termina- 
tion of its mission. Whenever the family boundaries 
are overstepped, the curse of nature is breathed upon 
the generative functions, and the illegitimate product 



44 Lessons in Life. 

dies out, or subsides into hopeless degeneration. The 
mule is a monster, and has no progeny. 

A plant, or a tree, never forgets itself. Cheat it of 
its root, and the stem remains faithful. The minutest 
twig, mit out to nurse upon the arm of a foreign 
mother, feels the thrill of the great primal law in its 
filmiest fibre, and breathes in every expression of its 
life its fidelity. If you will walk with me into the gar- 
den, I will show you a mountain-ash in full bloom ; but 
on the top of it you will see a strange little cluster of 
pear-blossoms. A twig from a Seckel pear-tree was, 
two or three years since, engrafted there. It had a hard 
time in uniting its being to that of the alien ash, but 
it loved life, and so, at length, it consented to join it- 
self to the transplanted forest tree. It was weak and 
alone, but it kept its law. Spring bathed the ash with 
its own peculiar bloom, and autumn hung it with its 
cluster of scarlet berries, and it was hidden from sight 
by the redundant foliage, but it kept its law. The roots 
of the mountain-ash, blindly reaching in the ground 
and imbibing its juices, knew nothing of the little 
orphaned twig above, that waited for its food ; but they 
could not cheat it of its law. Up to a certain point of 
a certain bough the rising fluids came under the law 
of the mountain-ash, and there they found a gateway, 
guarded by an angel that gave them a new command- 
ment. " Thus far — mountain-ash : beyond — Seckel 
pear ; " and if, in October, you will walk in the garden 



Reproduction in Kind. 45 

again with me, I will show you among the scarlet berries, 
bending heavily toward you, the clustered succulence of 
the Seckel. 

A seedsman may cheat you, but a seed never does. 
If you plant corn, it never comes up potatoes. If you 
sow wheat, it never comes up rye. Wrapped up in 
every capsule, bound up in every kernel, packed into 
every minutest germ, is this law, written by God at the 
beginning, " Produce thou after thy kind." So the 
whole living world goes on producing after its kind. 
Year after year we visit the seedsman, and read the 
labels on his drawers and packages, and bear home and 
plant in our gardens the little homely germs that keep 
God's law so well ; and summer rewards our trust in 
them with beautiful flowers, and autumn with bountiful 
fruition. Robins sang the same song to the Pilgrim 
Fathers that they sing to us. The may-flower breathes 
the same fragrance now that it breathed in the fingers 
of Rose Standish ; and man and woman, producing 
after their kind, are the same to-day that they were 
three thousand years ago. 

Now there is a significance in all the laws of material 
life, above and beyond their special office. They do 
the work they were set to do ; they rule the life they 
were appointed to rule ; but the laws, themselves, be- 
long to a family whose branches run through all intel- 
lectual, moral, and spiritual life. Laws live in groups 
no less uniformly than the existences which they inform 



46 Lessons in Life. 

and govern. It is a law, both of animal and vegetable 
structures, that they shall grow by what they feed on ; 
but this law passes the bounds of matter, and finds its 
widest meaning and its most extended application be- 
yond. The mind grows by what it feeds on ; the heart 
grows by what it feeds on ; love, hate, jealousy, revenge, 
fortitude, courage, grow by what they feed on ; spirit- 
uality grows by what spirituality feeds on. Wherever 
growth goes, through all the realm of God, this law 
goes ; and the law that every thing that produces shall 
produce after its kind, is just as universal as this. It 
begins in material life, and runs up through all life. 
Rather, perhaps, I should say, that it begins in spiritual 
life, and seeks embodiment in material life, so that we 
may apprehend it, The clouds were in heaven before 
there was any rain, and the rain comes down from 
heaven to tell us what the clouds are made of. I might 
go further, and say that every form of matter is but the 
embodiment of a divine thought, and that, with that 
thought, there passes into matter the laws that reside in 
divine things of corresponding nature and office. 

But I am becoming abstruse — quite too much so, con- 
sidering the simple, practical truths to which I am seek- 
ing to introduce my reader. I have been thinking how, 
in accordance with this law of which we are talking, our 
moods, our passions, our sympathies, our moral frames 
and conditions, reproduce themselves, after their kind, 
in the minds and lives around us. I call my child to 



Reproduction in Kind. 47 

my knee in anger ; I strike him a hasty blow that carries 
with it the peculiar sting of anger ; I speak a loud re- 
proof that bears with it the spirit of anger ; and I look 
in vain for any relenting in his flashing eyes, flushed 
face, and compressed lips. I have made my child an- 
gry, and my uncontrolled passion has produced after its 
kind. I have sown anger, and I have reaped anger in- 
stantaneously. Perhaps I become still more angry, in 
consequence of the passion manifested by my child, 
and I speak and strike again. He is weak and I am 
strong ; but, though he bow his head, crushed into si- 
lence, I may be sure that there is a sullen heart in the 
little bosom, and anger the more bitter because it is 
impotent. I put the child away from me, and think of 
what I have done. I am full of relentings. I long to 
ask his pardon, for I know that I have offended and 
deeply injured one of Christ's little ones. I call him 
to me again, press his head to my breast, kiss him, 
and weep. No word is spoken, but the little bosom 
heaves, the little heart softens, the little eyes grow 
tenderly penitent, the little hands come up and clasp 
my neck, and my relentings and my sorrow have pro- 
duced after their kind. The child is conquered, and so 
am I. 

If I utter fretful words, they come back to me like 
echoes. If I bristle all over with irritability, the quills 
will begin to rise all about me. One thoroughly irrita- 
ble person in a breakfast-room spoils coffee and toast, 



48 Lessons in Life. 

sours milk, and destroys appetite for a whole family. 
He produces after his kind. 

Generally, a man has around him those who are like 
him. If he be a man of strong nature and positive 
qualities, he will plant his moods and grow them in the 
natures next to him. Of course there must be excep- 
tions to this rule, because the will is free and man is 
reasonable, and the motive and power to pluck up un- 
welcome seed, and unpleasant growths, inheres in all 
men. I have known a good-natured man to live with a 
pettish, ill-natured, jealous, fault-finding wife through 
all the years of my acquaintance with him, he meantime 
growing no worse, and she growing no better. They 
had voluntarily and effectually shut themselves each 
from the influence of the other. He had closed his 
spirit against that which was bad in her, and she had 
closed her spirit against that which was good in him ; so 
she went on fretting through life, and he very good- 
naturedly laughing at her. We see this thing through 
all society. We see innocent girls grow up into virtue, 
though surrounded on every side by vicious example. 
We see natures and characters everywhere which re- 
fuse to receive the seed that falls upon them from the 
natures and characters of others ; but this makes noth- 
ing against the universality of the law we are consider- 
ing. Generally, I repeat, a man has around him those 
who are like him. The soil of a social circle is usually 
open, and whatever falls into it produces after its kind, 



Reproduction in Kind. 49 

whether it be good nature or ill nature, purity or im- 
purity, faith or skepticism, love or hate. 

It would appear, therefore, that there is no way by 
which we can surround ourselves by good society so 
readily as by being good ourselves. If we plant good 
seed, we may calculate with a great degree of certainty 
upon securing good fruit. If I plant frankness and 
open-heartedness, I expect to reap them ; and I have 
no right to expect to reap them unless I plant them. If 
I go to a man with my heart in my hand, I have good 
reason for expecting to meet a man with his heart in his 
hand. Frankness begets frankness, just as naturally 
and just as certainly, under the proper conditions, as 
like produces like in the animal and vegetable king- 
doms. There are men who do everything by indirec- 
tion ; who meet one as warily as if words were traps and 
pitfalls ; who manage a friendly interview as a general 
would manage a campaign ; and if they make their dem- 
onstration first, we are placed upon our guard. We 
unconsciously become wary and distrustful. They plant 
distrust and secretiveness, and they produce in us after 
their kind. No man can be treated frankly in this 
world unless he himself be frank. If we w r ould win con- 
fidence to ourselves, we must put confidence in others. 
The soul is like a mirror, reflecting that which stands 
before it. 

The young naturally take on the moods and accept 
and reflect the influences around them more readily 
3 



So Lessons in Life, 

than the old, just as a new piece of land will produce a 
better crop than one which is worn or pre-occupied. A 
virgin mind is like a virgin soil. It contains all the 
elements of fertility, and is adapted to the production 
of any crop. It has been exhausted in no department 
of its constitution. It is not occupied by roots, and 
shaded by foliage. It is not turf-bound and dry ; but 
it is soft and open, and clean and moist, and ready for 
the reception of any seed that may fall upon it. Until 
age brings individuality, the mind seems to have little 
choice as to what it will receive. Then, indeed, it does 
reject much seed that falls upon it, and much fails to 
take root because of the pre-occupation of the surface. 
A sensual seed is planted in the soul of a young man, 
and it springs up readily, and produces after its kind ; 
but the same seed tossed upon an older soil fails to sink 
and germinate, because the surface is pre-occupied, 
or, more frequently, because that peculiar element on 
which the germ must rely for quickening and sustenta- 
tion has been exhausted. Some manly or Christian 
grace falls upon a young mind, and quickly strikes root 
and rises into flower and fruit, while the same grace 
thrown upon an adult mind would fail to reach the soil, 
through the vices that cumber and choke it. It is thus 
that home and the school-room are literally seminaries 
— places where seed is sown — and it is in these that we 
expect and intend that every seed shall produce after its 
kind. Let us talk about this a little. 



Reproduction in Kind. 51 

I once heard a person say that one of his acquaint- 
ances, whom he named, had no moral right to have a 
child. Why was this harsh judgment uttered ? Be- 
cause he was hereditarily scrofulous, and would neces- 
sarily entail upon his offspring the family taint. If 
there were even a show of justice in this, what must be 
said of a parent who does not possess a single moral 
quality, that even he, in the selfishness of his parental 
love, would desire to see implanted in his child ? How 
many homes are scattered over Christendom in which 
no good seed is sown ! How many selfish, niggardly, 
vicious parents are there, who, producing after their 
kind, by generation and by influence, are filling the 
world with selfish, niggardly, and vicious children ! 
How many homes are there in which the gentle words 
of love are never heard ; in which the tender graces of a 
Christian heart are never unfolded ; in which a prayer 
is never uttered ! How many fathers are there whose 
lips are black with profanity and foul with obscenity, 
and whose lives are mean and unwholesome ! How 
many mothers are there whose tongues are nimble with 
scandal and bitter with scolding, and whose brains are 
busy with vanities and jealousies ! Ah ! if there be any 
man or woman in this world who has no moral right to 
have a child, it is one who has not a single trait of char- 
acter desirable to be reproduced in a child. Scrofula 
may be bad, but sin is worse. Bodily taint may be ter- 
rible, but spiritual taint is horrible. 



52 Lessons in Life, 

It is a general truth, under the law that every thing 
produces after its kind, that children become what their 
parents are. A simple people, virtuous and healthy, will 
produce virtuous, healthy, and true-hearted children. 
A luxurious people — lazy, sensual, wasteful — will pro- 
duce children like themselves. If we go through the 
vicious quarters of a great city, where licentiousness 
and drunkenness and beastly vices prevail, we shall find 
that though all die before old age, the communities are 
abundantly recruited by the children which they pro- 
duce. Men, principles, habits, ideas, vices, all have 
children, whose features betray their parentage ; so that 
no parent has a right to expect a child to be better than 
its father and its mother. On the contrary, he has every 
reason to believe that every thing that a child sees wrong 
in the parents, will be imitated. There is no way by 
which bad parents can bring up a family well. There 
must be in the parental life good principles, a sweet and 
equable temper, a tender and loving disposition, a firm 
self-control, a pleasant deportment, and a conscientious 
devotion to duty, or these will not be found in the life of 
the children. Bad seed, sown in the quick soil of a 
child's mind, is sure to spring up, and to bear fruit after 
its kind. No sensible man ever dreams of gathering figs 
from thistles, or grapes from bramble-bushes, and no 
man has- the slightest right to suppose that he can bring 
up a family to be better than he is. The plant will be 
true to the seed. 



Reproduction in Kind. 53 

We are in the habit of hearing that the children of a 
certain neighborhood, or school, or town, are extraordi- 
narily bad children. Great wonder is sometimes ex- 
pressed in regard to such instances, when, really, they 
are not wonderful at all. When children are unusually 
bad, parents are unusually bad, or, if they are not bad- 
hearted, they are wrong-headed. I ought, perhaps, to 
say here that I have known an irascible, tyrannical, 
unjust and cruel school-teacher to spoil a neighborhood 
of children, when the parents were without any special 
fault, save that of failing to thrust him out of the charge 
which he had abused. But usually the fault is at home. 
If the seed planted there be good, it will produce good 
fruit. Yet my reader will say that the best man he ever 
knew, had the worst children he ever saw. The truth 
of the statement is admitted, but what do you know of 
the home life of that family ? How much unreasonable 
restraint has been exercised upon those children ? 
From how many exhibitions of stern and unrelenting 
injustice have these children suffered ? What laxity of 
discipline and carelessness of culture have reigned in 
that family ? I know many who seem to be excellent 
men in society, but who are any thing but amiable men 
at home. In one they are pleasant, affable, kind, and 
charitable ; in the other, cross-grained, hard, unkind, 
and unjust. I declare with all positiveness, that when a 
family or a neighborhood of children is bad, there is a 
reason for it outside of the children. There are bad 



54 Lessons in Life. 

influences which descend upon them, and work out their 
natural results in them. 

It is astonishing to see how long a seed will lie in 
the ground without germinating, and how true it will 
remain to its kind through untold years. Cut down a 
pine forest, where an oak has not been seen for a cen- 
tury, and oak shrubbery will spring up. Heave out 
upon the surface a pile of earth that has lain hidden 
from the eyes of a dozen generations, and forthwith it 
will grow green with weeds. Plough up the prairie, 
and turn under the grass and flowers that have grown 
there since the white settler can remember, and there 
will spring from the inverted sod a strange growth that 
has had no representative in the sunlight for long ages. 
Soul and soil are alike in this. I once heard a man say 
of his father, who had been dead many years — " I hate 
him : I hate his memory." The words were spoken 
bitterly, with a flushed face and angry eyes, yet he who 
spoke them was one of the kindest and most placable of 
men. Deep down in his heart, under love for his mother 
which was almost worship, and under affection for wife, 
children, and sisters which was as deep as his nature, 
and under multiplied friendships, there had been planted 
this seed. The father had treated the boy harshly and 
unjustly ; and the young soul was stung as the tender 
fruit is stung by an insect. Where anger and resent- 
ment were sown, anger and resentment were ready to 
spring up the moment the seed was uncovered. I have 



Reproduction in Kind. 55 

known men to carry through life a revenge planted in 
their hearts by some unjust and cruel schoolmaster. 
How many men are there in the world who have sworn 
to revenge themselves upon one who had stung them 
with anger or injustice when in childhood ! 

So we come to the grand lesson, that if we would have 
good children, we must ourselves be exactly what we 
would have them become ; if we would govern our fam- 
ilies, we must first govern ourselves ; if we would have 
only pleasant words greet our ears in the home circle, 
we must speak only pleasant words. We should see to 
it that we plant nothing, the legitimate fruits of which 
we shall not be willing and glad to see borne in the 
lives of our children. If our children are bad, the 
fault is, ninety-nine cases in a hundred, our own, in 
some way. If we would reform society, or make it 
better in any respect, our quickest way to do it is to 
reform and make ourselves better. If I would reap 
courtesy and hospitality and kindness and love, I must 
plant them ; and it is the sum of all arrogance to as- 
sume that I have a right to reap them without planting 
them. A man who receives courtesy without exercising 
it, reaps that which he has not sown, He is a thief, 
and ought in justice to be kicked out of society. Bless- 
ings on the man who sows the seeds of a happy nature 
and a noble character broadcast wherever his feet 
wander, — who has a smile alike for joy and sorrow, a 
tender word always for a child, a compassionate utter- 



56 Lessons in Life. 

ance for suffering, courtesy for friends and for strangers, 
encouragement for the despairing, an open heart for all 
— love for all — good words for all ! Such seed produces 
after its kind in all soils where it finds lodgment ; and 
that which the sower fails to reap, passes into hands 
that are grateful for the largess. 



LESSON V. 

TRUTH AND TRUTHFULNESS. 

" For truth is as impossible to be soiled by any outward touch as a 
sunbeam." — Milton. 

" Odds life ! must one swear to the truth of a song? " 

— Matthew Prior. 

" Get but the truth once uttered, and "tis like 
A star new-born that drops into its place, 
And which, once circling in its placid round, 
Not all the tumult of the earth can shake." 

— Lowell. 

ONE of the rarest powers possessed by man is the 
power to state a fact. It seems a very simple thing 
to tell the truth, but, beyond all question, there is noth- 
ing half so easy as lying. To comprehend a fact in its 
exact length, breadth, relations, and significance, and 
to state it in language that shall represent it with exact 
fidelity, are the work of a mind singularly gifted, finely 
balanced, and thoroughly practiced in that special de- 
partment of effort. The greatness of Daniel Webster 
was more apparent in his power to state a fact, or to 
3* 



58 Lessons in Life. 

present a truth, than in any other characteristic of his 
gigantic nature. It was the power of truth that won for 
him his forensic victories. Whenever he was truest to 
truth, then was truth truest to him. He was a man who 
implicitly believed in the power of truth to take care of 
itself when it had been fairly presented ; and the failures 
of his life always grew out of his attempts to make false- 
hood look like truth — a field of effort in which the most 
gifted of his contemporaries won the most brilliant of his 
triumphs. 

The men are comparatively few who are in the habit 
of telling the truth. We all lie, every day of our lives — 
almost in every sentence we utter — not consciously and 
criminally, perhaps, but really, in that our language 
fails to represent truth, and state facts correctly. Our 
truths are half-truths, or distorted truths, or exaggerated 
truths, or sophisticated truths. Much of this is owing to 
carelessness, much to habit, and, more than has gen- 
erally been supposed, to mental incapacity. I have 
known eminent men who had not the power to state a 
fact, in its whole volume and outline, because, first, 
they could not comprehend it perfectly, and, second, 
because their power of expression was limited. The 
lenses by which they apprehended their facts were not 
adjusted properly, so they saw everything with a blur. 
Definite outlines, cleanly cut edges, exact apprehension 
of volume and weight, nice measurement of relations, 
were matters outside of their observation and experi- 



Truth and Truthfulness. 59 

ence. They had broad minds, but bungling ; and their 
language was no better than their apprehensions — usu- 
ally it was worse, because language is rarely as definite 
as apprehension. Men rarely do their .work to suit 
them, because their tools are imperfect. 

There are men in all communities who are believed to 
be honest, yet whose word is never taken as authority 
upon any subject. There is a flaw or a warp somewhere 
in their perceptions, which prevents them from receiv- 
ing truthful impressions. Everything comes to them 
distorted, as natural objects are distorted by reaching 
the eye through wrinkled window-glass. Some are able 
to apprehend a fact and state it correctly, if it have no 
direct relation to themselves ; but the moment their 
personality, or their personal interest, is involved, the 
fact assumes false proportions and false colors. I know 
a physician whose patients are always alarmingly sick 
when he is first called to them. As they usually get 
well, I am bound to believe that he is a good physician ; 
but I am not bound to believe that they are all as sick 
at beginning as he supposes them to be. The first vio- 
lent symptoms operate upon his imagination and excite 
his fears, and his opinion as to the degree of danger at- 
taching to the diseases of his patients is not worth half 
so much as that of any sensible old nurse. In fact, no- 
body thinks of taking it at all ; and those who know 
him, and who hear his sad representations of the condi- 
tion of his patients, show equal distrust of his word and 



6o Lessons in Life. 

faith in his skill, by taking it for granted that they are in 
a fair way to get well. 

It is impossible for bigots, for men of one idea, for fan- 
atics, for those who set boundaries to themselves in relig- 
ious, social, and political creeds, for men who think more 
of their own selfish interests than they do of truth, and for 
vicious men, to speak the truth. We are all, I suppose, 
bigots, to a greater or less extent. We all have a creed 
written in our minds, or printed in our books ; and to 
this we are more or less blindly attached. We set down 
an article of faith, or adopt an opinion, and nothing is 
allowed to interfere with it. If a sturdy fact comes 
along, and asks admission, we turn to our creed to see 
if we can safely entertain it. If the creed says " No," 
we say " No/' and the fact is turned out of doors, and 
misrepresented after it is gone. Our creeds are our 
dwellings. They come next to us, and nothing can 
come to us, or go out from us, without going through 
our creeds. The simple fact of the death of Jesus 
Christ upon the cross, reaching the mind through vari- 
ous creeds, and passing out again, goes through as many 
phases as there are creeds, ranging through a scale 
which at one extreme presents a God dying to redeem 
the lost millions of a world, and, at the other, a benevo- 
lent, sweet-tempered man, yielding his life in testimony 
of the honesty of his teachings. 

No new truth presents itself, which does not have to 
run the gauntlet of our creeds. If it get through alive, 



Truth and TrutJif ulncss. 61 

and seem disposed to be peaceable, and to remain sub- 
ordinate to them, then we let it live, and receive it into 
respectable society; — otherwise, we entreat it shame- 
fully. Sometimes the truth is too much for us, and as- 
serts its power to stand without our help, and then we 
compromise with it. The world will turn on its axis, 
and wheel around its orbit, though we stop the mouth 
of the profane wretch who declares it ; so, after a while, 
we get tired of fighting the fact, and shape our creeds 
accordingly. We fight the sturdy truths of geology, be- 
cause they interfere with our creeds, but after awhile 
the sturdy truths of geology become too sturdy for us, 
and then we begin to patronize them, and to confer 
upon them the honor of harmonizing with our creeds. 
A man who has adopted the creed of a materialist, is 
entirely incompetent to receive, entertain, and repre- 
sent a spiritual fact. My creed is the window at which 
I sit, and look at all the world of truth outside of me. 
All truth is tinted by the medium through which it 
passes to reach my mind ; and such is my imperfection 
and my weakness, that I could not raise my window im- 
mediately, and place my soul in direct, vital contact 
with the great atmosphere of truth, if I would. 

But if bigotry be such a bar to the correct perception 
of truth, what shall be said of self-interest and personal 
vices of appetite and passion ? It is possible for no 
man who owns a slave and finds profit in such owner- 
ship, to receive the truth touching the right of man to 



62 Lessons hi Life. 

himself, and the moral wrong of slavery. We have too 
much evidence that even creeds must bend to self-inter- 
est, and that any traffic will be regarded as morally 
right which is pecuniarily profitable. Once, in the creed 
of the slaveholders, slavery was admitted to be wrong, 
but that was when it was looked upon as temporary in 
its character, and, on the whole, evil in its results to all 
concerned. When it was sought to be made a perma- 
nent institution, because it seemed to be the only source 
of the wealth of a section, it became right ; and even 
the slave-trade logically fell into the category of lauda- 
ble and legitimate commerce. It is impossible for a 
people who have allowed pecuniary interest to deprave 
their moral sense to this extent, to perceive and receive 
any sound political truth, or to apprehend the spirit and 
temper of those who are opposed to them. The same 
may be said of the liquor traffic. The act of selling 
liquor is looked upon with horror by those who stand 
outside, and who have an eye upon its consequences ; 
but the seller deems it legitimate, and looks upon any 
interference with his sales as an infringement of his 
rights. Our selfish interest in any business, or in any 
scheme of profit, distorts all truth either directly or in- 
directly related to such business or scheme, or living in 
its region and atmosphere. The President of the United 
States, or the governor of the commonwealth, may be 
an excellent man ; but if I want an office, and he fails 
to appoint me to it, why I don't exactly regard him as 



Truth and Truthfulness. 63 

such. He becomes to me a very ordinary and vulgar 
sort of man indeed ; but if he give me my office, then, 
though he may be all that his enemies think him, he 
seems to me to be invested with a singular nobility 
of character that other people do not apprehend at 
all. 

The vices of humanity are sad media through which 
to receive truth — often so opaque that no truth can 
reach the mind at all. It is impossible for a man whose 
affections are bestialized, whose practices are libertine, 
and whose imaginations are all impure, to receive the 
truth that there are such things as purity and virtue, and 
that there are men and women around him who are vir- 
tuous and pure. There is no truth which personal vice 
will not distort. The approaches to a sensual mind are 
through the senses, and the same may be said of all 
minds in a general way; but the approaches to a s«nsual 
mind are only through the senses, and they, being per- 
verted, abused, exhausted, or unduly excited, furnish 
the utterly unreliable avenues by which truth reaches 
the soul. The grand reason why truth, published from 
the pulpit and the platform, revealed in periodicals and 
books, and embodied in pictures and statues, works no 
greater changes upon the minds and morals of men, is, 
that it never gets inside of men in the shape in which it 
is uttered. It passes through such media of bigotry, or 
self-interest, or vice, that its identity and power are 
lost. 



62 Lessons in Life. 

himself, and the moral wrong of slavery. We have too 
much evidence that even creeds must bend to self-inter- 
est, and that any traffic will be regarded as morally 
right which is pecuniarily profitable. Once, in the creed 
of the slaveholders, slavery was admitted to be wrong, 
but that was when it was looked upon as temporary in 
its character, and, on the whole, evil in its results to all 
concerned. When it was sought to be made a perma- 
nent institution, because it seemed to be the only source 
of the wealth of a section, it became right ; and even 
the slave-trade logically fell into the category of lauda- 
ble and legitimate commerce. It is impossible for a 
people who have allowed pecuniary interest to deprave 
their moral sense to this extent, to perceive and receive 
any sound political truth, or to apprehend the spirit and 
temper of those who are opposed to them. The same 
may be said of the liquor traffic. The act of selling 
liquor is looked upon with horror by those who stand 
outside, and who have an eye upon its consequences ; 
but the seller deems it legitimate, and looks upon any 
interference with his sales as an infringement of his 
rights. Our selfish interest in any business, or in any 
scheme of profit, distorts all truth either directly or in- 
directly related to such business or scheme, or living in 
its region and atmosphere. The President of the United 
States, or the governor of the commonwealth, may be 
an excellent man ; but if I want an office, and he fails 
to appoint me to it, why I don't exactly regard him as 



Truth and Truthfulness. 63 

such. He becomes to me a very ordinary and vulgar 
sort of man indeed ; but if he give me my office, then, 
though he may be all that his enemies think him, he 
seems to me to be invested with a singular nobility 
of character that other people do not apprehend at 
all. 

The vices of humanity are sad media through which 
to receive truth — often so opaque that no truth can 
reach the mind at all. It is impossible for a man whose 
affections are bestialized, whose practices are libertine, 
and whose imaginations are all impure, to receive the 
truth that there are such things as purity and virtue, and 
that there are men and women around him who are vir- 
tuous and pure. There is no truth which personal vice 
will not distort. The approaches to a sensual mind are 
through the senses, and the same may be said of all 
minds in a general way; but the approaches to a s«nsual 
mind are only through the senses, and they, being per- 
verted, abused, exhausted, or unduly excited, furnish 
the utterly unreliable avenues by which truth reaches 
the soul. The grand reason why truth, published from 
the pulpit and the platform, revealed in periodicals and 
books, and embodied in pictures and statues, works no 
greater changes upon the minds and morals of men, is, 
that it never gets inside of men in the shape in which it 
is uttered. It passes through such media of bigotry, or 
self-interest, or vice, that its identity and power are 
lost. 



64 Lessons in Life. 

It is not, therefore, remarkable that so little truth is 
told when so little is received — that so little is expressed 
when so little is apprehended. The largest field will 
not produce an oat-straw that will stand alone, if there 
be no silica in the soil, and the largest mind cannot ex- 
press a pure truth if it has lived always so encased that 
pure truth could not find its way into it. All truth 
reaches our minds through various media, by which it is 
more or less colored and refracted ; and it is very rare 
that a man has the power to embody in language and 
utter a truth in the degree of perfection in which he re- 
ceived it. As I said at beginning, the power to state a 
fact correctly, or to express a pure truth, is among the 
rarest gifts of man. It never struck me that David was 
remarkably hasty, when he said that all men were liars. 
All men are liars, in one respect or another. They are 
divisible into various classes, which may legitimately be 
mentioned under two heads, viz., unconscious liars and 
conscious liars. 

Of those who lie, and suppose they are telling the 
truth, I have already spoken. They are a large and 
most respectable class ol people, and their apology 
must be found in the theory I have advanced ; yet 
among these may be found men and women who will 
require all the amplitude of our mantles of charity to 
cover them. I have been much impressed with a pas- 
sage in Dr. Bushnell's volume, entitled " Christian 
Nurture," which incidentally touches upon this subject, 



Truth and Truthfulness. 65 

in the writer's characteristically powerful way ; and as 
I cannot condense it, I will copy it : 

" There is, in some persons who appear in all other respects to 
be Christians, a strange defect of truth, or truthfulness. They 
are not conscious of it. They would take it as a cruel injustice 
were they only to suspect their acquaintances of holding such an 
estimate of them. And yet, there is a want of truth in every sort 
of demonstration they make. It is not their words only that lie, 
but their voice, air, action ; their every putting forth has a lying 
character. The atmosphere they live in is an atmosphere of pre- 
tence. Their virtues are affectations. Their compassions and 
sympathies are the airs they put on. Their friendship is their 
mood, and nothing more ; and yet they do not know it. They 
mean, it may be, no fraud. They only cheat themselves so effec- 
tually as to believe that what they are only acting is their truth. 
And, what is difficult to reconcile, they have a great many Chris- 
tian sentiments ; they maintain prayer as a habit, and will some- 
times speak intelligently of matters of Christian experience." 

It was the oracular sage Deacon Bedott, who, in 
view of the imperfections of his kind, remarked several 
times in his life : " We are all poor creeturs " — a re- 
mark that comes as near to being pure truth as any we 
meet with outside of the Bible and the standard trea- 
tises on mathematics. We are, indeed, poor creatures. 
Our highest conceptions of truth are contemptible, our 
best utterances fall short of our conceptions, and our 
lives are poorer than our language. 

Of all conscious and criminal lying, I know of none 
that exceeds in malignity and magnitude that of a po- 



66 Lessons in Life. 

litical campaign. In such a struggle, men get in love 
with lies. They seek apologies for the circulation of 
lies. They hug lies to their hearts in preference to 
truth. It is the habit of hopeful philosophers to enlarge 
upon the benefit to our people of the annual and quad- 
rennial contests for place, which occur in our country, 
as if principles were the things really at stake, and per- 
sonalities were out of the question, as the lying poli- 
ticians would have us believe. What, in honesty, can 
be said of the leading speakers and the leading presses 
which sustain a party in a contest for power, but that 
they studiously misrepresent their opponents, misstate 
their own motives, give currency to false accusations, 
suppress truth that tells against them, exaggerate the 
importance of that which favors them, seize upon all 
plausible pretexts for fraud, skulk behind subterfuges, 
and lie outright when it is deemed necessary. And 
what can be expected more and better than this, when 
the leaders are office-seekers, who live and thrive on 
the grand basilar lie that the motive which inspires all 
their action is a regard for the popular good ? Of 
course I speak generally. There are politicians and 
presses that are above personal considerations ; but 
even these become infected with the prevalent poison 
of falsehood that is everywhere associated with their 
efforts. 

The social lying of the world has found multitudi- 
nous satirists, and furnished the staple of a whole school 



Truth and Truthfulness. 67 

of writers. We touch our hats in token of respect to 
men whom in our hearts we despise. We inquire ten- 
derly for the health of persons for whom we do not 
care a straw. We who cannot afford it wear expensive 
clothing, and display grand equipage, and give costly 
entertainments, not because we enjoy it, but because 
we wish to impress upon the world the belief that we 
can afford it. It is our way of expressing a lie w T hich 
seems to us important to the maintenance of our social 
standing. We receive with a kiss a visitor whom we 
wish were in Greenland, and betray her to the next who 
comes in. We pretend to ourselves and our neighbors 
that there is nothing which we so much esteem as the 
simple friendships of life, and the straight-forward love 
and hearty good will of the honest hearts around us, 
yet when the rich and the titled are near, we are glad- 
dened and flattered, and look with supercilious con- 
tempt upon the humble friendships which we affected 
to cherish supremely. In our conscience and judgment, 
we appreciate the genuine values of social life, and we 
profess in our language to hold them in just estimation, 
but in our life and practice we honor that which is fic- 
titious and conventional, apprehending in our conscience 
and judgment that we are acting a lie. Socially I can- 
not but believe that there is far more of truthfulness in 
humble than in high life. The more nearly we come 
down to hearty nature, and the further we go from the 
artificial and conventional, the nearer do we come to 



68 Lessons in Life. 

truth. Truth is indeed at the bottom of this well, and 
not in the artificial wall that rises above it, nor the 
buckets that go up and down as caprice or selfishness 
turns the windlass. 

Business lying is, after all, the most universal of 
any. It is confined to no age and no nation. Solomon 
understood the world's great game when he wrote : 
"It is naught, it is naught, saith the buyer : but when 
he is gone his way, then he boasteth ; " and from Solo- 
mon's day down to ours, buyers have depreciated that 
which they would purchase, and then boasted of their 
bargains. When two selfish persons meet on opposite 
sides of a counter, there rises between them a sort of 
antagonism". One is interested in selling an article of 
merchandise at the highest practicable profit, and the 
other is interested in obtaining it at the lowest possible 
price. Of the small, cunning lies that pass back and 
forth over that counter, of the half-truths told, and the 
whole truths suppressed, of deceptions touching the 
quality of goods on one side and the ability to buy on 
the other, it would be humiliating to tell. If every lie 
told in the shops, across mahogany and show-case, by 
buyers and sellers, were nailed like base coin to the 
counter, there would be no room for the display of 
goods. It is considered no mean compliment to a busi- 
ness man to say that he is sharp at a bargain ; yet this 
sharpness is rarely more than the faculty of ingenious 
lying. A man who sells to me an article worth only 



Truth and Truthfulness. 6g 

five dollars for twice that sum is " a sharp man ; " 
but he cannot make such a sale to me without telling 
me, in some way, a lie. The price he puts upon his 
merchandise is a lie, essentially, in itself. 

There is a great deal of business lying that by long 
habit becomes unconscious. If we take up a news- 
paper, we shall find that quite a number of the stores 
around us, kept by our excellent friends, have " the 
largest and finest stock of goods ever displayed in the 
city." We shall find that they have been selling for 
years at " unprecedentedly low prices," that they are 
" selling at less than cost," that they are pushing off 
goods at rates "ruinously low," and that they can offer 
bargains to buyers that will confound their competitors. 
I suppose that none of these advertisers think they are 
lying, or, if they do, that their lying is of a harmful 
character. Lying in this way is supposed to be part of 
the legitimate machinery of trade. Promising definitely 
to finish work without the expectation of keeping the 
promise, or being able to keep it, is another kind of 
half unconscious lying. There are men engaged in 
various trades, in all communities, whose word is of no 
more value,, when in the form of a promise to finish 
within a certain period a certain piece of work, than the 
fly-leaf of a last year's almanac. There are men whom 
every one knows who will lie without blushing about 
their work, and who will stand at their counter and lie 
all day, and then sleep with a peaceful conscience at 



yo Lessons in Life. 

night, having failed to fulfil a single pledge during their 
waking hours. Then there are people who will promise 
to pay bills, and promise a hundred times over, and 
never pay, and never expect to pay. When a bill is 
presented, they promise to pay, as a matter of course ; 
and that is considered as good as the gold until it is 
presented again ; and then comes another promise, and 
another and another. The creditor knows the debtor 
lies, but many a debtor of this kind would feel insulted 
and injured by any spoken doubts of his truthfulness. 

But the field is large, and I am already beyond the 
limits which I set for myself in these essays. It will 
be seen that I regard truthfulness as, on the whole, a 
rare article in this world. It is in some respects neces- 
sarily so. Many men are incapable of stating a fact or 
telling a truth. They have not the power to compre- 
hend or express either. The majority of men receive 
truth through such media of prejudice, selfishness, 
bigotry, sensuality, and the like, that they never get it 
pure, and are therefore incapable of uttering it cor- 
rectly, even when their power of expression equals their 
power of perception, which is not commonly the case. 
So there is a world of unconscious lying ; but I am 
sorry to believe that there is just as large a world of 
conscious lying. In politics, society, and business, the 
conscious and intentional lie abounds. " Lord ! how 
this world is given to lying ! " 



LESSON VI. 

MISTAKES OF PENANCE, 

" For of the soul the body form doth take, 
For soul is form and doth the body make." 

— Spenser. 

"Can sackcloth clothe a fault or hide a shame? 
Or do thy hands make Heaven a recompense, 
By strewing dust upon thy briny face ? 
No ! though thou pine thyself with willing want 
Or face look thin, or carcass ne'er so gaunt ; 
Such holy madness God rejects and loathes 
That sinks no deeper than the skin or clothes." 

— Quarles. 

" Beauty is truth, truth beauty." 

— Keats. 

1HAVE every reason to believe that God loves 
Shakers, but I do not think He admires them. I 
do not see how He can ; but perhaps this is not a com- 
petent reason to offer in the premises. I saw a wagon- 
load of what I supposed to be Shakers of both sexes, 
riding along the street, the other day ; and I wondered 
what I should think of them if I had made them. I 



7 2 Lessons in Life. 

think I should have been about equally vexed and 
amused to see the lines that I had made beautiful," dis- 
guised, and every grace-giving swell of limb and bust, 
upon which I had exercised such exquisite toil, 'carefully 
hidden. They sat up very straight and prim, in a very 
square wagon, behind a square-trotting horse, driven by 
" right lines " in a pair of hands that seemed to grow 
out of the driver's stomach, while his elevated, rectan- 
gular elbows cut rigidly against the air on either side. 
It was a vision for a painter — a house painter — " a 
painter by trade." The long-haired, meek-looking men, 
with their flat-crowned, broad-brimmed hats, straight 
coats and neutral colors, and the women with their 
sugar-scoop bonrrets, white kerchiefs and straight waists, 
looked like a case of faded wax -figures,* in prison uni- 
form, that had " come down to us from a former gene- 
ration." 

I heaved a sigh as the wagon-load of mortified and 
badly dressed flesh passed out of sight, and wondered 
if the souls inside of those bodies were as angular as 
their covering. I did not believe it — I do not believe it. 
I have no doubt that underneath those straight waist- 
coats hearts have throbbed at the sight of woman and 
child, and longed for home and family life, with yearn- 
ings that could not be uttered. Those straight-laced 
sensibilities have been thrilled by beauty, and bathed 
in the grace and glory of the life around them. Trees 
have whispered to them, flowers have looked up and re- 



Mistakes of Penance. 73 

buked them, brooks have called to them with laughter, 
rivers have smiled upon them in sunshine, the great sky 
has bent over them with infinite tenderness and fulness 
of beauty, and they have felt what they could not de- 
fine. It was something very wrong, they supposed, and 
so they buttoned their straight jackets around them, 
turned their eyes away from beholding vanity, and 
thought they had done an excellent thing. I know that 
those young women, with their abominable clothing out- 
side, and their crushed and abused sympathies inside, 
are unhappy, unless they have all been mercifully trans- 
formed into fanatics. It is useless to tell me that a man 
can ignore or trample to death the strongest passion of 
his nature — the strongest, the purest, and the most en- 
nobling — and be a happy man. It is useless to say that 
a man or woman can walk through a world of beauty — 
themselves the most beautiful of all things — and bind 
themselves up in unbecoming drapery, and smother all 
their impulses to express the beauty with which God in- 
spires them, and do it with content and satisfaction. It 
cannot be done. 

So, when this wagon-load of Shakers drove out of 
sight, I heaved a sigh, for I knew that not to be unhappy 
in the life which was typefied in their dress and estab- 
lishment, would be a greater misfortune, essentially, 
than dissatisfaction and discontent would be. If they 
were happy in their life, they must have become per- 
verted in their natures, or indurated beyond the sus- 
4 



74 Lessons in Life. 

ceptibility to receive the impressions of healthy men 
and women. If God ever put any thing majestic and 
noble into a man, and gave him a fitting frame for it, 
He never intended that it should be hidden in a meal- 
bag, or permanently quenched under a smock-frock. 
In the infinite variety which He has introduced into hu- 
man character and into human forms and faces, there 
is no warrant for dressing men in uniform, but a most 
emphatic protest against it. If God made woman beau- 
tiful, He made her so to be looked at — to give pleasure 
to the eyes which rest upon her — and she has no busi- 
ness to dress herself as if she were a hitching-post, or 
to transform that which should give delight to those 
among whom she moves, into a ludicrous caricature of 
a woman's form. 

I repeat that I have every reason to believe that God 
loves Shakers, but I do not think He admires them. If 
God admires the bodies He has made, He cannot ad- 
mire them when they are covered by the Shaker dress, 
for it spoils the looks of them, and differs essentially 
from the plan which He pursues in draping all other 
forms of life. There is no grace about it, and no beauty 
of color. God admires clouds, I doubt not, when 
painted by the setting sun, and stars flashing in the 
heavens, and the flowers of myriad hues that are scat- 
tered over the earth, but if these are objects of His spe- 
cial admiration, as they are of ours, what can He think 
of a drab Shaker bonnet ? What can He think when 



Mistakes of Penance. 75 

man and woman, the glory and crown of His creation, 
are entirely overtopped and thrown into the shade by 
birds and bees and blossoms, and go poking around the 
world in unexampled and ingeniously contrived ugliness ? 
What does He think of men and women who take that 
passion of love, which was intended to make them 
happy, and give them sweet companionship, and bear 
young children to their arms, and trample it under their 
feet as an unholy thing, and to welcome to their hearts, 
in its stead, blackness, and darkness, and tempest? 
What does He think of lives out of which are shut all 
meaning and all individuality, and all love and expres- 
sion of beauty, and all vivifying, liberalizing, and hu- 
manizing experience ? 

I owe no grudge to the Shakers. I like their apple- 
sauce (they ask a thrifty price for it) and have faith in 
the genuineness and the generation, under favorable 
conditions, of their garden seeds ; but I object to their 
style of life and piety, and to every thing outside of 
Shakerdom which looks like it. I object to this whole 
idea (and the Shakers have not monopolized it) that 
God takes delight in the voluntary personal mortifica- 
tion of His children, and that He approves of their go- 
ing about, sad-faced and straight-laced, studiously avoid- 
ing all temptation to enjoy themselves. 

I have seen a deacon in the pride of his deep humil- 
ity. He combed his hair straight, and looked studi- 
ously after the main chance ; and while he looked, he 



7 8 Lessons in Life. 

loved' him." There are men whom one cannot help lov- 
ing and admiring though they lack a great many things 
— things very "needful" to make them perfect men. 
Now I put it to good, conscientious Christian men and 
women, whether they do not take more pleasure in the 
society of a warm-hearted, generous, chivalrous, well-fed, 
man of the world, than in the society of any of that class 
of Christians of whom the deacon I have mentioned is 
a type. I know they do, and they cannot help it. There 
is more of that which belongs to a first-class Christian 
character in the former than in the latter, and if I were 
called upon to test the two men by commanding them 
respectively to sell what they have and give to the poor, 
I should be disappointed were the deacon to behave the 
best. A character which religion does not fructify — 
does not soften, enlarge, beautify, and enrich — is not 
benefited by religion — or, rather, has not possessed it- 
self of religion. God loves that which is beautiful and 
attractive in character, just as much as we do, and it 
makes no difference where he sees it. He does not dis- 
like the amiable traits of a sinner, because he is a sin- 
ner, nor does he admire those traits of a Christian which 
we feel to be contemptible, simply because they belong 
to a Christian. A Christian sucked dry of his human- 
ity, is as juiceless and as flavorless as a sucked orange, 
and I believe that God regards him in the same light 
that we do. He will save such I doubt not, for their 
faith ; and, in the coming world, they will learn what 



Mistakes of Penance. 79 

they do not know here ; but the question whether they 
are as well worth saving as some of their neighbors, may, 
I think, be legitimately entertained. In saying this, I 
mean to be neither light nor irreverent. I mean simply 
to indicate that some men are worth a great deal more 
to themselves and to their fellows than others. 

So, when I look abroad upon the world, and see men 
shaving their heads, and wearing nasty hair shirts, and 
shutting themselves up in cells, and living lives of celi- 
bacy, and when I see women retiring from the world 
which they were sent to adorn, populate, and bless, and 
Shakers driving around in square wagons and studiously 
ugly garments, and Christians, who should know better, 
abandoning all the bright and cheerful things of life, and 
feeling that there is merit in mortification, I cannot but 
feel that God looks down upon it all with sadness and 
pity. After doing every thing in His power to make His 
children happy — after filling the world with good things 
for their use, and giving them abundant faculties for en- 
joying them — after endowing them with beauty, and a 
sense of that which is beautiful — it must be sad to Him 
to see them w r andering about in strange disguises, hug- 
ging to their half-rebellious hearts the awful mistake 
that, however much they may suffer, they are gaining 
favor thereby in the sight of their Maker. Of course, I 
believe in self-denial, and in the nobility of self-denial, 
for the good of others ; but I believe that all self-denial 
that partakes of the character of penance, in whatever 



8o Lessons in Life. 

form and under whatever circumstances it may develop 
itself, is always a thing of mischief, and always a thing 
of error. It has its basis in the miserable theory that 
there is something in the passions and appetites with 
which God has constituted man that is essentially bad — 
a theory as impious as it is injurious — as fatal to all just 
conceptions of the divine Being and of man's relations 
to Him, as to all human happiness. 

Everything which is truly admirable is good, and 
good and desirable in the degree by which it is admi- 
rable. A beautiful face and form are admirable, and 
just as good as they are admirable — just as good in their 
element of beauty. They are good for that quality, and 
in that quality, which excites our admiration. A beau- 
tiful bonnet, a beautiful dress, a beautiful brooch or 
necklace, are all admirable, and good because they are 
admirable, or good because every thing admirable is 
necessarily good. A family over which the father pre- 
sides with tender dignity, and in which the mother 
moves with love's divinest ministry — where the faces of 
innocent children are shining, while their voices make 
music sweeter than the morning songs of birds — is ad- 
mirable, and it is good in all those respects which make 
it admirable. A well-dressed man or woman is admi- 
rable, and that thing is good in itself which makes them 
so. A man who carries his heart in his hand, who deals 
both justly and generously by men, who bears a sunny 
face and pleasant words into society, whose cultured 



Mistakes of Peiiance. 81 

mind enriches freely all with whom it is brought into re- 
lation, who has^ abundant charity for the weak and err- 
ing, and who takes life and what it brings him content- 
edly, is an admirable man, and good in all the points 
which make him admirable. A house that presents a 
harmonious and handsome exterior to the eye of the 
passenger, and whose interior combines equal con- 
venience and elegance, is admirable, and, by that token, 
good. 

Now these very simple propositions have their cor- 
relatives, which it is not necessary to set down in order, 
any further than fairly to illustrate my point. Things 
that are not admirable are not good. If the dress of a 
Shaker is not admirable, it is not good. If that sort of 
life which is led in a cloister, by monks or nuns, is not 
admirable, it is not good. If a man who professes to be 
a Christian lives a life out of which is shut all with which 
an unsophisticated humanity sympathizes — a life barren 
of attractive fruit — -a life bare in all its surroundings — a 
life with no genial outflow and expression — a life of nig- 
gardly negatives rather than of generous positives — then 
that life is not admirable, and if it be not admirable, it 
cannot be good in those respects. A man may carry 
along with such a life as this a spotless conscience and a 
strict devotion to apprehended duty, and these may be 
admirable and good, but the other characteristics cannot 
be either ; and however much God may approve his 
honest heart and honest endeavor, He cannot admire 
4* 



82 Lessons in Life. 

the style of manhood in which they have their dull and 
difficult illustration. The idea that I wish definitely to 
convey is this : that on the basis of a right heart, God 
would have us build up a bright, generous, genial, ex- 
pressive Christian character, and use gratefully and 
gladly all those things which He has prepared to make 
life cheerful and admirable. I believe a saint ought to 
have a better tailor than a sinner, and be in all manly 
ways a better 'fellow. I believe a true Christian should 
be in everything that constitutes and belongs to a man 
the most admirable man in the world. 

I have an idea that God looks with the same kind of 
contempt on the prominent characteristics of certain 
styles of Christian men and women, that men of the 
world do. There is nothing admirable in cant and 
whine, and nasal psalm-singing, and men whose hearts 
are livers and whose blood is bile ; and I cannot believe 
that He blames people for not admiring them, and not 
being attracted to them. I do not believe that an ad- 
mirable Christian life is repulsive to the men of the 
world. I believe that wherever the human mind recog- 
nizes a rounded, chastened, rich, and outspoken Chris- 
tian character, whether it belong to manhood or woman- 
hood, it admires it, and feels attracted to it, by the 
degree in which it admires it. I believe, moreover, 
that the Christianity which discards as vanities those 
things which God has provided for the pleasure of His 
children, and mortifies the love of beauty, and adopts 



Mistakes of Penance. 83 

the theory that God is pleased with penance, and de- 
grades, abuses, and traduces the body to win greater 
sanctity of soul, and finds a sin in every sweet of sense, 
is a bastard Christianity. God is not the God of the 
dead, but of the living. 



LESSON VII. 

THE RIGHTS OF WOMAN. 

"Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard 
Are sweeter ; therefore ye soft pipes play on ; 
Not to the sensual ear, but more endeared, 
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tones." 

— John Keats. 

" I am as free as Nature first made man." 

— Dryden. 

"What she wills to do or say 
Seems wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best. 1 ' 

— Milton. 

IT was the sarcastic remark of a crusty old parson 
of Connecticut that woman has the undoubted right 
to shave and sing bass, if she choose to do so. I 
question the right of bearded man to shave himself, 
and I will not concede that woman has a superior right, 
based on inferior necessities ; but believing that man 
has an undoubted right to sing bass, I am inclined to 
accord the same right to woman. Woman is a female 
man, and there is no reason that I know of why she 



The Rights of Woman. 85 

should not have the same rights, precisely, that a male 
man has. I claim for myself, and for man, the privi- 
lege of singing treble, under certain circumstances ; 
and why should I not accord to woman the right to 
sing bass ? The brave old chorals of Germany would 
hardly be sung with much effect were the airs 'denied 
to the masculine voice, yet if it be man's prerogative 
to sing bass, it is surely woman's to sing treble. If it 
be usurpation for her to grope among the gutturals of 
the masculine clef, it is gross presumption for him to 
attempt to leap the five-rail fence that stands between 
him and high C. I put this consideration forward for 
the purpose of stopping every caviller's mouth upon 
the subject, until I present arguments of a broader 
'and more comprehensive character, in support of 
woman's right to sing bass. 

It is claimed by those who deny woman's right to 
sing bass that she is needed for the treble and alto 
parts. Needed by whom ? Needed by man ? But 
who gave man the right to set up his needs as the law 
of woman's life ? If man needs treble and alto, I hope 
he may get them. He has the undoubted right to sing 
both parts to suit his own fancy, or to hire others to do 
it for him. Man needs buttons oil his shirts, and clean 
linen, but for the life of me I cannot see why that need 
defines a woman's duty in any respect. Let him do his 
own washing, and sew on his own buttons. Suppose 
a woman should need to have hooks and eyes sewed 



86 Lessons in Life. 

upon her dress, as some of them do, sometimes, after 
taking a very long breath, would that determine it to 
be man's duty to sew them on? " It is a poor rule 
that will not work both ways." This is one of the 
illustrations of man's selfishness — that he sets up his 
needs as the rule by which the rights of one -half of 
the human race are to be determined. 

This same selfishness of man will demand that ' I 
reconsider this talk, and will accuse me of sophistry. 
It will declare that I do not state the case fairly. It 
will say that woman needs money with which to buy 
her dresses and procure her food, and strong hands to 
labor for her and protect her, and that these needs do 
indeed define man's duty with respect to her. But I 
place all this on the ground of gallantry and humanity. 
Of course, we are all very glad to do these things, you 
know, — we who have human feelings — but woman has 
no right to them, based upon her need — particularly if 
she be a woman who insists, as I do, upon her inde- 
feasible right to sing bass. I know that it helps things 
along for a woman to look after a man's linen and but- 
tons, and do his fine work generally, because she seems 
to have a kind of natural knack at the business. I am 
aware that it is exceedingly pleasant to hear a woman 
sing treble, if she sings it well, but I am talking, be it 
remembered, of woman's right to sing bass. Let us 
stick to the question. 

The enemies of this highest among the rights of 



The Rights of Woman. 87 

woman are fond of alluding to the fact that only here 
and there a woman can be found who wishes to avail 
herself of her right, and practically to enter upon the 
work of singing bass. The large majority of women 
prefer to sing the soprano, while a few, of moderate 
views, adopt alto as a kind of compromise. But what 
has this fact to do with the matter of right in the 
premises ? Most people prefer beef-steak without 
onions, but I never knew that fact to be brought for- 
ward as an argument against the right of a man to eat 
it with onions. It is possible, indeed, that if people were 
more accustomed to eating beef-steak with onions, or 
those savory vegetables were less objectionable in their 
style of perfume, there would be a majority in favor 
of the associated luxuries. We must remember, too, in 
considering this aspect of the question, that woman is, 
to a certain extent, a creature of whims. She is ex- 
ceedingly apt to adopt a practice because it is fashiona- 
ble. If it were fashionable for woman to sing bass, how 
long would it be before the lower tones would find full 
development ? And how long would it be before the 
men themselves would repeat those words of the immor- 
tal bard :'- — 

" Her voice was ever soft, 
Gentle and low, — An excellent thing in woman." (?) 

After all, this sort of argument against woman's right 
to sing bass answers itself. If the preference of women 



88 Lessons in Life. 

generally for the soprano and alto be a good reason for 
their confining themselves to the performance of those 
parts, then a change of preference would be a valid rea- 
son for their leaving them. If individual right goes with 
general preference, then the pillars of the universe are 
uprooted, or we have no pillars worth mentioning. I 
suppose that women generally prefer in-door to out-of- 
door employments — labor that draws less upon muscle, 
and more upon ingenuity and delicate-fingered facility ; 
but that settles nothing as to their right to engage in 
muscular toils in the open air. The German peasant- 
woman has labored out-of-doors for many generations. 
The result has been the gradual approach to each other 
of her hips and shoulders, the extinguishment of that 
portion of her person known as the waist, and some 
noticeable flatness over the cerebral organs ; but the 
German peasant-woman has her right, and that is worth 
any sacrifice, you know. If she prefers hoeing cab- 
bages to spinning flax, who shall hinder her? If all 
women should prefer hoeing cabbages to spinning flax, 
or any variety of yarn, who shall hinder them ? So far 
as man is concerned, woman has a right to grow her 
shoulders just as near her hips, and wear a head as 
flat as she pleases. In short, the general preference of 
women with respect to any thing decides no question of 
individual right, whatever. 

I will not admit that the general preference of women 
for private life imposes any obligation upon any woman 



The Rights of Woman. 89 

to abstain from public life, or affects in any way her 
right to enter upon public life. I am aware that one 
would not like to have one's wife or sister an opera- 
singer, or a public dancer, or a preacher, or a doctor in 
general practice, or a circus-rider, or a popular lecturer, 
or an actress ; but I am talking about the question of 
right. Most women would shrink from war — from its 
fatigues, its dangers, its bloody strife ; but Joan of Arc 
asserted her right to go into war ; and her name is en- 
grossed upon the scroll of fame. All women have the 
same right to go to war that she had. I confess that I 
should like to see a regiment of women six feet high, 
officered by women, all dressed in Balmorals illustrating 
the national colors, marching to battle in as close order 
as the peculiarity of their garments would permit, and 
accompanied by a corps of cavalry in side-saddles. 
Such an assertion of woman's right would be grand be- 
yond description. I should not care to live on very 
intimate terms with the colonel of the regiment, but I 
don't know as that has anything to do with this ques- 
tion. 

I was talking, however, about the right of women to 
sing bass, and must go on. It is declared by those 
who oppose this right that woman has no natural organs 
and aptitudes for bass. This is the strong point of the 
enemy, but it amounts to nothing. If woman fails, ap- 
parently, in organs and aptitudes for this part, it only 
shows what long years of abuse will accomplish. Let 



go Lessons in Life. 

us never forget in this discussion that woman is only a 
female man, that there is no such thing as u sex of 
soul," and that woman's vocal organs are built exactly 
like man's — as much like man's as her hands and her 
feet and her head are like his — a little smaller, perhaps, 
— that's all. It is a familar fact, I presume, that the 
little colts born of South American dams take to am- 
bling as their natural step, simply because the men of 
South America have taught the fathers and mothers of 
these colts to amble through uncounted generations. 
Now in North America we train horses to trot, and the 
consequence is that amblers are scarce, and in most 
cases have to be educated to their gait. This is the way 
in which nature adapts herself to popular want and 
popular usage. The large variety of apples which load 
our orchards were developed from the insignificant 
crab, and the peach was the child of the almond, or the 
almond of the peach — I have forgotten which. Now I 
suppose (with some feeble doubts about it) that man 
and woman started exactly together, that her singing 
treble better than she sings bass results from usage, 
and that her singing treble rather than bass was purely 
a matter of accident at first. All analogy teaches me 
that if she had begun on bass, and the other part had 
been given to man, we should be hearing to-day of 
Ma'lle Patti, "the charming new baritone," and " the 
magnificent basso," Madame Jenny Lind-Goldschmidt, 
while admiring crowds would toss flowers to Carl 



The Rights of Woman. 91 

Formes, " the unapproachable soprano," or Mario, 
u the king of contraltos." 

I suppose that those who maintain that woman has 
no natural organs and aptitudes for singing bass, would 
say that she has no natural organs and aptitudes for 
boxing and playing at ball. Just because woman holds 
her fists the wrong side up, as if she were kneading 
bread rather than flesh, it is claimed that she was not 
made for the " manly art of self-defence," and from the 
wholly incompetent facts that she cannot throw a ball 
three feet against a common north-west wind, and is 
not as fleet as a deer, it is judged that she has no right 
to engage in base-ball. But suppose all women had 
been accustomed to boxing and playing ball as much as 
the men have been ; would they not have arrived at 
corresponding excellence ? I know that as women are 
now (and they please me exceedingly) they have not 
muscle to " hit from the shoulder" with force sufficient 
to make them formidable antagonists ; and I am aware 
that they lack something in the length of limb requisite 
for the rapid locomotion of the ball-ground ; but they 
have never had a chance. See what the washerwomen 
have done for themselves. They seem to be a separate 
race of beings, for they all have large arms, and shoul- 
ders that would do honor to Tom Sayers. I have seen 
negro slave women at work in the field, with a muscular 
development that would be the envy of a Bowery boy. 
The washerwoman and the field slave show what can be 



92 Lessons in Life. 

done by cultivation. I know that their style of figure is 
not quite so attractive as I have seen, and I know that 
wherever there is an extraordinary tax upon muscle 
there is an extraordinary repression of mind and blunt- 
ing of the sensibilities, but it must be remembered that 
we are talking about rights, now. I claim and maintain 
(I may as well come out with the whole of it) that a 
woman has a right to do any thing she chooses to do, 
with perhaps the unimportant exception of becoming 
the father of a family. 

The truth is that women have never had a fair chance. 
They can do any thing they are trained to do. The 
proper physical culture of woman, carried on through a 
competent number of generations, would develop her 
beyond all our present conceptions. She would be 
likely to arrive at a high condition of muscle and a low 
condition of mind, very unlike our present idea of the 
noblest type of womanhood ; but very possibly our 
ideals of womanhood are conventional, or traditional. 
She has hands, and has a right to use them ; a tongue, 
and the right to wag it in her own way ; powers corre- 
sponding to those of man in all important respects, and 
the right to develop and employ them according to her 
taste and choice. I deny, to man, the privilege of defin- 
ing the rights and duties of woman. A woman is mis- 
tress of her own actions and judge of her own powers and 
aptitudes ; and if any woman thinks that she can do a 
man's work better than what society considers her own, 



The Rights of Woman. 93 

then she has an undeniable right to do it, if she can get 
it to do, and is willing to accept the work with the con- 
ditions that attend it. 

I am a firm believer in "woman's rights" — especially 
her right to do as she pleases. It is possible that, be- 
fore the law, she is not in possession of all her rights, 
but all wrongs in this direction will be corrected as time 
progresses. I speak particularly at this time of her right 
to sing bass, because it is a representative right, and 
covers, as with a lid, a whole chest full of others. Yet 
while I claim this right, I confess that I should not care 
to see it exercised to any great extent, for I think that 
treble is, by all odds, the finer and more attractive part 
in music. Is it worth while to exercise the right of sing- 
ing bass, when it costs a good deal to get up a voice 
for it, and when treble comes natural and easy, and is 
much pleasanter to the ear ? Bass would be a bad thing 
for a lullaby, and could only silence a baby by scaring 
it. If I should have committed to me the melodies of 
the world, I would care very little about my right to sing 
those subordinate parts that gather around them in obe- 
dient harmonies. At least, I think I would, unless some 
upstart man should deny my right to sing any thing but 
melodies. If it were committed to me to sing like a 
bird, I would not care, I think, to exercise my right to 
roar like a bull. If I can witch the ears and win the 
hearts of men and women by doing that which I can do 
easily and naturally and well, then I shall do best not to 



94 Lessons in Life. 

exercise my right to do that which I can only do diffi- 
cultly, and unnaturally, and ill. 

Woman, in my apprehension, is the mistress, not 
alone of the melody of music, but of the melody of life. 
Whatever it may be possible to do by cultivation and a 
long course of development, it is doubtful whether a 
woman would ever sing bass well. I am aware that she 
has the right, and the organs, but I question whether 
her bass would amount to any thing — whether it would 
be worth singing. When women talk with me about 
their right to vote, and their right to practise law, and 
their right to engage in any business which usage has 
assigned to man, I say, " yes — you have all those 
rights." I never dispute with them at all. Indeed, you 
see how I have put myself forward as the defender of 
these same rights ; yet I should be sorry to see them ex- 
ercised by the women I admire and love. It is all very 
well to say that the presence of woman at the ballot-box 
would purify it, and restrain the manners of the men 
around it ; but I have seen enough of the world to, learn 
that all human influence is reciprocal and reactionary. 
Man and the ballot-box might gain, but woman would 
lose, and men and the ballot-box themselves would lose 
in the long run. The ballot-box is the bass, and it 
should be man's business to sing it, while woman should 
give him home melody with which it should harmonize. 

In the matter of rights, I suppose that I should not 
differ materially with any strong-minded woman ; but I 



The Rights of Woman. 95 

have always observed that the most truly lovable, hum- 
ble, pure-hearted, God-fearing, and humanity-loving 
women of my acquaintance, never say any thing about 
these rights, and scorn those of their sex who do. I 
have never known a woman who was at once satisfied in 
her affections and discontented with her woman's lot 
and her woman's work. There is a weak place, or a 
wrong place, or a rotten place, in the character or na- 
ture of every woman who stands and howls upon the 
spot where her Creator placed her, and neglects her own 
true work and life while claiming the right to do the 
work and live the life of man. I will admit all the rights 
that such a woman claims — all that I myself possess — if 
she will let me alone, and keep her distance from me. 
She may sing bass, but I do not wish to hear her. She 
is repulsive to me. She offends me. 

I believe in women. I believe they are the sweetest, 
purest, most unselfish, best part of the human race. I 
have no doubt on this subject, whatever. They do sing 
the melody in all human life, as well as the melody in 
music. They carry the leading part, at least in the 
sense that they are a step in advance of us, all the way 
in the journey heavenward. I believe that they cannot 
move very widely out of the sphere which they now oc- 
cupy, and remain as good as they now are ; and I deny 
that my belief rests upon any sentimentality, or jeal- 
ousy, or any other weak or unworthy basis. A man who 
has experienced a mother's devotion, a wife's self-sacri- 



g6 Lessons in Life. 

ficing love, and a daughter's affection, and is grateful 
for all, may be weakly sentimental about some things, 
but not about women. He would help every woman he 
loves to the exercise of all the rights which hold dignity 
and happiness for her. He would fight that she might 
have those rights, if necessary ; but he would rather 
have her lose her voice entirely, than to hear her sound 
a bass note so long as a demi-semiquaver. 



LESSON VIII. 

AMERICAN PUBLIC EDUCATION. 

"Keen are the pangs 
Advancement often brings. To be secure, 
Be humble. To be happy, be content." 

— James Hurdis. 

"For not that which men covet most is best; 
Nor that thing worst which men do most refuse. 
But fittest is that each contented rest 
With that they hold." 

— Spenser. 

" Men have different spheres. It is for some to evolve great moral truths, 
as the Heavens evolve stars, to guide the sailor on the sea and the traveller 
on the desert ; and it is for some, like the sailor and the traveller, simply to 
be guided." — Beecher. 

A VENERABLE gentleman who once occupied a 
prominent position in a leading New England col- 
lege, was remarking recently upon the difficulty which 
he experienced in obtaining servants who would attend 
to their duties. He had just dismissed a girl of sixteen, 
who was so much " above her business" as to be intol- 
S 



98 Lessons in Life. 

erable. The girl's father, who was an Englishman, 
called upon him for an explanation. The employer 
told his story, every word of which the father received 
without question, and then remarked, with considerable 
vehemence: (( It is all owing to those cursed public 
schools " The father retired, and the old professor sat 
down and thought about it ; and the result of his think- 
ing did not differ materially from that of the father. It 
was not, of course, that there was any thing in the 
studies pursued which had tended to unlit the girl for 
her duties. It was very possible indeed for the girl to 
have been a better servant in consequence of her intelli- 
gence. There was nothing in English grammar or the 
multiplication table to produce insubordination and dis- 
content. There was nothing in the whole case that 
tended to condemn public schools, as such ; but it was 
the spirit inculcated by the teachers of public schools, 
which had spoiled the girl for her place, and which has 
spoiled, and is still spoiling, thousands of others. 

Let us look for a moment into the influence of such a 
motto as the following, written over a school-house door 
— always before the eyes of the pupils, and always al- 
luded to by school committees and visitors who are in- 
vited to u make a few remarks " : 

*' Nothi7ig is impossible to him nuho ivills" 

This abominable lie is placed before a room full of 
children and youth, of widely varying capacities, and 



American Public Education. 99 

great diversity of circumstances. They are called upon 
to look at it, and believe in it. Suppose a girl of hum- 
ble mental abilities and humble circumstances looks at 
this motto, and says : '* I ' will' be a lady. I c will ' be 
independent. I 'will' be subject to no man's or wo- 
man's bidding." Under these circumstances, the girl's 
father, who is poor, removes her from school, and tells 
her that she must earn her living. Now I ask what kind 
of a spirit can she carry into her service, except that of 
surly and impudent discontent ? She has been associa- 
ting in school, perhaps, with girls whom she is to serve 
in the family she enters. Has she not been made unfit 
for her place by the influences of the public school ? 
Have not her comfort and her happiness been spoiled 
by those influences ? Is her reluctant service of any 
value to those who pay her the wages of her labor ? 

It is safe, at least, to make the proposition that public 
schools are a curse to all the youth whom they unfit for 
their proper places in the world. It is the favorite 
theory of teachers that every man can make of himself 
any thing that he really chooses to make. They resort 
to this theory to rouse the ambition of their more slug- 
gish pupils, and thus get more study out of them. I 
have known entire schools instructed to aim at the high- 
est places in society, and the most exalted offices of life. 
I have known enthusiastic old fools who made it their 
principal business to go from school to school, and talk 
such stuff to the pupils as would tend to unfit every 



ioo Lessons in Life. 

one of humble circumstances and slender possibilities for 
the life that lay before him. The fact is persistently 
ignored, in many of these schools, established emphati- 
cally for the education of the people, that the majority 
of the places in this world are subordinate and low 
places. Every boy and girl is taught to " be something" 
in the world, which would be very well if being " some- 
thing " were being what God intended they should be ; 
but when being "something" involves the transforma- 
tion of what God intended should be a respectable shoe- 
maker into a very indifferent and a very slow minister 
of the Gospel, the harmful and even the ridiculous 
character of the instruction becomes apparent. 

There are two classes of evil results attending the in- 
culcation of these favorite doctrines of the school-teach- 
ers — first, the unfitting of men and women for humble 
places ; and, second, the impulsion of men of feeble 
power into high places, for the duties of which they have 
neither natural nor acquired fitness. There are no 
longer any American girls who go out to service in fam- 
ilies. They went into mills from the chamber and the 
kitchen, but now they have left the mills, and their places 
are filled by Scotch and Irish girls, Why is this ? Is it 
because that among the American girls there are none 
of poverty, and of humble powers ? Is it because they 
are not wanted ? Or is it because they have become 
unfitted for such services as these, and feel above them ? 
Is it not because they have become possessed of notions 



American Public Education. ioi 

that would render them uncomfortable in family service, 
and render any family they might serve uncomfortable ? 
An American servant, who good-naturedly accepts her 
condition, and knows and loves her place, who is willing 
to acknowledge that she has a mistress, and who enters 
into her department of the family life as a harmonious 
and happy member, may exist, but I do not know her. 
People have ceased inquiring for American sen-ants. 
They would like them, generally, because they are intel- 
ligent and Protestant, but they cannot get them because 
they are unwilling to accept service, and the obligations 
and conditions it imposes. Where all the American girls 
are, I do not know. I can remember the time when 
thrifty farmers, mechanics, and tradesmen took wives 
from the kitchens of gentlemen where they were em- 
ployed, — good, intelligent, self-respectful women they 
were, too — who became modest mistresses of thrifty 
families afterward ; — but that is all done with now. Un- 
der the present mode of education, nobody is fitted for 
a low place, and everybody is taught to look for a high 
one. 

If we go into a school exhibition, our ears are deaf- 
ened by declamation addressed to ambition. The boys 
have sought out from literature every stirring appeal to 
effort, and every extravagant promise of reward. The 
compositions of the girls are of the same general tone. 
We hear of " infinite yearnings," from the lips of girls 
who do not know enough to make a pudding, and of be- 



102 Lessons in Life. 

ing polished u after the similitude of a palace" from 
those who do not comprehend the commonest duties of 
life. Every thing is on the high-pressure principle. 
The boys, all of them, have the general idea that every 
thing that is necessary to become great men is to try for 
it ; and each one supposes it possible for him to become 
Governor of the State, or President of the Union. The 
idea of being educated to fill a humble office in life is 
hardly thought of, and every bumpkin who has a mem- 
ory sufficient for the words repeats the stanza : — 

41 Lives of great men all remind us 
We can make our lives sublime, 
And departing, leave behind us 
Footprints on the sands of time." 

There is a fine ring to this familiar quatrain of Mr. 
Longfellow, but it is nothing more than a musical cheat. 
It sounds like truth, but it is a lie. The lives of great 
men all remind us that they have made their own mem- 
ory sublime, but they do not assure us at all that we can 
leave footprints like theirs behind us. If you do not be- 
lieve it, go to the cemetery yonder. There they lie — ten 
thousand upturned faces — ten thousand breathless bos- 
oms. There w^as a time when nre flashed in those vacant 
orbits, and warm ambitions pulsed in those bosoms. 
Dreams of fame and power once haunted those hollow 
skulls. Those little piles of bones that once were feet 



American Public Education. 103 

ran determinedly through forty, fifty, sixty, seventy 
. years of life ; but where are the prints they left ? "He 
lived — he died — he was buried " — is all that the head- 
stone tells us. We move among the monuments, we 
see the sculpture, but no voice comes to us to say that 
the sleepers are remembered for any thing they ever 
did. Natural affection pays its tribute to its departed 
object, a generation passes by, the stone grows gray, 
and the man has ceased to be, and is to the world as if 
he had never lived. Why is it that no more have left a 
name behind them ? Simply because they were not en- 
dowed by their Maker with the power to do it, and be- 
cause the offices of life are mainly humble, requiring 
only humble powers for their fulfilment. The cemeter- 
ies of one hundred years hence will be like those of to- 
day. Of all those now in the schools of this country, 
dreaming of fame, not one in twenty thousand will be 
heard of then, — not one in twenty thousand will have 
left a footprint behind him. 

Now I believe that a school, in order to be a good 
one, should be one that will fit men and women, in the 
best way, for the humble positions that the 'great mass 
of them must necessarily occupy in life. It is not neces- 
sary that boys and girls be taught any less than they 
are taught now. They should receive more practical 
knowledge than they do now, without 'a doubt, and less 
of that which is simply ornamental, but they cannot 
know too much. An intelligent gardener is better than 



104 Lessons in Life. 

a clod-hopper, and an educated nurse is better than an 
ignorant one ; but if the gardener and the nurse have 
been spoiled for their business and their condition, by 
the sentiments which they have imbibed with their 
knowledge, they are made uncomfortable to themselves, 
and to those whom they serve. I do not care how much 
knowledge a man may have acquired in school, that 
school has been a curse to him if its influence has been 
to make him unhappy in his place, and to fill him with 
futile ambitions. 

The country has great reason to lament the effect of 
the kind of instruction upon which I have remarked. 
The universal greed for office is nothing but an indica- 
tion of the appetite for distinction which has been dili- 
gently fed from childhood. It is astonishing to see the 
rush for office on the occasion of the change of a State 
or National Administration. Men will leave quiet and 
remunerative employments, and subject themselves to 
mean humiliations, simply to get their names into a 
newspaper, and to achieve a little official importance 
and social distinction. This desire for distinction seems 
to run through the whole social body, as a kind of moral 
scrofula, developing itself in various ways, according to 
circumstances and peculiarities of constitution. The 
consequence is that politics have become the pursuit of 
small men, and we no longer have an opportunity to put 
the best men into office. The scramble for place among 
fools is so great and so successful, that men of dignity 



American Public Education. 105 

and modesty retire from the field in disgust. Everybody 
wants to " be something/' and in order to be something, 
everybody must leave his proper place in the world, and 
assume a position which God never intended he should 
fill. Look in upon a State legislature once, and you will 
find sufficient illustration of my meaning. Not one man 
in five of the whole number possesses the first qualifica- 
tion for making the laws of a State, and half of them 
never read the constitution of the country. I mean no 
contempt for the good, honest men of whom our State 
legislatures are principally composed, but I wish simply 
to say that there is nothing in their quality of mind, 
habits of thought, intellectual power, or style of pursuits 
that fits them for the great and momentous functions 
of legislation. They are there, a set of "nobodies," 
mainly for the purpose of becoming "somebodies," 
and not for any object connected with the good of the 
State. 

Somehow, all the students in all our schools get the 
idea, that a man in order to be "somebody" must be in 
public life. Now think of the fact that the millions at- 
tending school in this country have in some way acquired 
this idea, and that only one in every one thousand of 
these is either needed in public life, or can win success 
there. Let this fact be realized, and it is easy to see 
that the nine hundred and ninety-nine will feel that they 
are somehow cheated out of their birthright. They de- 
sired to be in public life, and be " somebody," but they 
5* 



io6 Lessons in Life. 

are not, and so their life grows tame and tasteless to 
them. They are disappointed. The men solace them- 
selves with a petty justice's commission, or a town office 
of some kind, and the women — some of them — talk 
about " woman's rights," and make themselves notorious 
and ridiculous at public meetings. I think women have 
rights which they do not at present enjoy, but I have 
very little confidence in the motives of their petticoated 
champions, who court mobs, delight in notoriety, a/id 
glory in their opportunity to burst away from private 
life, and be recognized by the public as " somebodies." 
I insist on this : — that private and even obscure life is 
the normal condition of the great multitude of men and 
women in this world ; and that, to serve this private life, 
public life is instituted. Public life has no legitimate 
significance save as it is related to the service of private 
life. It requires peculiar talents and peculiar educa- 
tion, and brings with it peculiar trials ; and the man 
best fitted for it would be the last man confidently to 
assert his fitness for it. 

Thousands seek to become " somebodies" through 
the avenues of professional life ; and so professional life 
is full of " nobodies." The pulpit is crowded with good- 
ish " nobodies " — men who have no power— no unction 
— no mission. They strain their brains to write com- 
mon-places, and wear themselves out repeating the rant 
of their sect and the cant of their schools. The bar is 
cursed with " nobodies " as much as the pulpit. The 



American Public Education, 107 

lawyers are few ; the pettifoggers are many. The bar, 
more than any other medium, is that through which the 
ambitious youth of the country seek to attain political 
eminence. Thousands go into the study of law, not so 
much for the sake of the profession, as for the sake of 
the advantages it is supposed to give them for political 
preferment. An ambitious boy who has taken it into 
his head to be " somebody," always studies law; and as 
soon as he is " admitted to the bar" he is ready to begin 
his political scheming. Multitudes of lawyers are a dis- 
grace to their profession, and a curse to their country. 
They lack the brains necessary to make them respecta- 
ble, and the morals requisite for good neighborhood. 
They live on quarrels, and breed them that they may 
live. They have spoiled themselves for private life, and 
they spoil the private life around them. As for the 
medical profession, I tremble to think how many enter 
it because they have neither piety enough for preaching, 
nor brains enough to practice law. When I think of the 
great army of little men that is yearly commissioned to 
go forth into the world with a case of sharp knives in one 
hand, and a magazine of drugs in the other, I heave a 
sigh for. the human race ! Especially is all this lament- 
able when we remember that it involves the spoiling of 
thousands of good farmers and mechanics, to make poor 
professional men, while those who would make good 
professional men are obliged to attend to the simple 
duties of life, and submit to preaching that neither feeds 



108 Lessons in Life. 

nor stimulates them, and medicine that kills or fails to 
cure them. 

There must be something radically wrong in our 
educational system, when youth are generally unfitted 
for the station which they are to occupy, or are forced 
into professions for which they have no natural fitness. 
The truth is that the stuff talked to boys and girls 
alike, about " aiming high," and the assurances given 
them, indiscriminately, that they can be any thing that 
they choose to become, are essential nuisances. Our 
children all go to the public schools. They are all 
taught these things. They all go out into the world 
with high notions, and find it impossible to content 
themselves with their lot. They had hoped to realize 
in life that which had been promised them in school, 
but all their dreams have faded, and left them disap- 
pointed and unhappy. They envy those whom they 
have been taught to consider above them, and learn 
to count their own lives a failure. Girls starve in a 
mean poverty, or do worse, because they are too proud 
to work in a chamber, or go into a shop. American 
servants are obsolete, all common employments are at 
a discount, the professions are crowded to overflowing, 
the country throngs with demagogues, and a general 
discontent with a humble lot prevails, simply because 
the youth of America have had the idea drilled into 
them that to be in private life, in whatever condition, 
is to be, in some sense, a " nobody." It is possible 



American Public Education. 109 

that the schools are not exclusively to blame for this 
state of things, and that our political harangues, and 
even our political institutions, have something to do 
with it. 

What we greatly need in this country is the incul- 
cation of soberer views of life. Boys and girls are 
bred to discontent. Everybody is after a high place, 
and nearly everybody fails to get one ; and, failing, 
loses heart, temper, and content. The multitude dress 
beyond their means, and live beyond their necessities, 
to keep up a show of being what they are not. Farm- 
ers' daughters do not like to become farmers' wives, 
and even their fathers and. mothers stimulate their 
ambition to exchange their station for one which stands 
higher in the world's estimation. Humble employ- 
ments are held in contempt, and humble powers are 
everywhere making high employments contemptible. 
Our children need to be educated to fill, in Christian 
humility, the subordinate offices of life which they must 
fill, and taught to respect humble callings, and to beau- 
tify and glorify them by lives of contented and glad 
industry. When public schools accomplish an end so 
desirable as this, they will fulfil their mission, and they 
will not before. I seriously doubt whether one school 
in a hundred, public or private, comprehends its duty 
in this particular. They fail to inculcate the idea that 
the majority of the offices of life are humble, that the 
powers of the majority of the youth which they contain 



no Lessons in Life. 

have relation to those offices, that no man is respect- 
able when he is out of his place, and that half of the 
unhappiness of the world grows out of the fact, that, 
from distorted views of life, men are in places where 
they do not belong. Let us have this thing altogether 
reformed. 



LESSON IX. 

PER VERSENESS. 

"Because she's constant, he will change, 

And kindest glances coldly meet, 

And all the time he seems so strange, 

His soul is fawning at her feet. 1 ' 

— Coventry Patmore. 

" All that we seem to think of is to manage matters so as to do as little 
good and plague and disappoint as many people as possible." 

— Hazlitt. 

IT seems to me, either that there is a great deal of 
human nature in a pig, or that there is a great deal 
of pig in human nature. I find myself always sympa- 
thizing with a pig that wishes to go in an opposite 
direction to that in which its owner would drive it. It 
would be a sufficient reason for me to desire to go east- 
ward, that a man was behind me, with an oath in his 
mouth and a very heavy boot on his foot, endeavoring 
to drive me westward. We are jealous of our freedom. 
We naturally rise in opposition to a will that under- 
takes to command our movements. This is not the 



1 1 2 Lessons in Life. 

result of education at all ; it is pure human nature. 
Command a child — who shall be only old enough to 
understand you — to refrain from some special act, and 
you excite in his heart a desire to do that act ; and he 
will have, nine times in ten, no reason for his desire to 
do it but your command that he shall not. The young- 
est human soul that has a will at all, takes the first 
occasion to declare its independence. 

Now, I believe this principle in human nature to be, 
in itself, good. It is that which declares a man's right 
to himself — that which asserts personal liberty in 
thought, will, and movement. I believe it existed in 
Adam and Eve, and that it is more than likely that the 
tree of the knowledge of good and evil was despoiled 
because our beautiful great-grandmother, (for whom I 
confess much sympathy and affection,) was forbidden to 
touch it. It is a principle which should always be care- 
fully distinguished from perverseness, in all our dealings 
with young and old, and in all our estimates of human 
character. When a child obeys a man, or when one 
man obeys another, it should always be for good and 
sufficient reason. Neither child nor man should be ex- 
pected to surrender his right to himself without the pre- 
sentation to him of the proper motive. When, yielding 
to this motive, the soul consents to be directed or led, it 
becomes obedient. Compulsion may secure conformity, 
but never obedience. If I, as a child or man, am to 
yield myself to the direction of any other man, that man 



Perverseness. 113 

is bound to present to me an adequate motive for the 
surrender. God throws upon me personal responsibility 
— gives me to myself — and no man, parent or otherwise, 
can make me truly obedient without giving me the 
motive for obedience. When a child or a man fails 
to yield to the legitimate motives of obedience, he is 
perverse, and it is about perverseness in some of its 
forms of manifestation that I propose to talk in this 
article. 

At starting, I must give perverseness a somewhat 
broader meaning than that thus far indicated. I will 
say that that person is perverse w r ho, from vanity, or 
pride of opinion and will, or malice, or any mean con- 
sideration, refuses to yield his conduct and himself to 
those motives and influences which his reason and con- 
science recognize to be pure and good and true. In its 
least aggravated form, perhaps, we find it among lovers. 
Women will sometimes persistently ignore a passion 
which they know has taken full possession of them, and 
grieve the heart that loves them by a coldness and in- 
difference which they do not feel at all. Rather than 
acknowledge their affection for one whose loss would 
kill them, or, what would be the same thing, kill the 
world for them, they have lied, grown sick, and gone 
nearly insane. This is a perverseness very uncommon. 
Sometimes lovers have been very tender and devoted 
so long as a doubt of ultimate mutual possession re- 
mained to give zest to their passion, but the moment this 



1 14 Lessons in Life. 

doubt has been removed, one or the other has become 
incomprehensibly indifferent. 

I have noticed that very few married pairs are 
matches in the matter of warmth and expression of 
passion between the parties. The man will be all de- 
votion and tenderness — brimming with expressions of 
affection and exhibitions of fondness, and the woman 
all coolness and passivity, or (which is much more com- 
mon) the woman will be active in expression, lavishing 
caresses and tendernesses upon a man who very possi- 
bly grows harder and colder with every delicate proof 
that the whole wealth of his wife's nature is poured at 
his feet, as a libation upon an altar. It is here that we 
see some of the strangest cases of perverseness that it 
is possible to conceive. I know men who are not bad 
men — who, I suppose, really love and respect their 
wives — and who would deny themselves even to heroism 
to give them the comforts and luxuries of life, yet who 
find themselves moved to reject with poorly-covered 
scorn, and almost to resent, the varied expressions of 
affection to which those wives give utterance. I know 
wives who long to pour their hearts into the hearts of 
their husbands, and to get sympathetic and fitting re- 
sponse, but who are never allowed to do it. They live 
a constrained, suppressed, unsatisfied life. They ab- 
solutely pine for the privilege of saying freely what they 
feel, in all love's varied languages, toward men who love 
them, but who grow harder with every approach of 



Perverscness. 1 1 5 

tenderness and colder with every warm, invading breath. 
A shower that purifies the atmosphere, and refreshes 
the face of heaven itself, sours cream, just as love's 
sweetest expression sours these men. 

I have known wives to walk through such an experi- 
ence as this into a condition of abject slavery — to waste 
their affection without return, until they have become 
poor, and spiritless, and mean. I have known them to 
lose their will — to become the mere dependent mis- 
tresses of their husbands — to be creeping cravens in 
dwellings where it should be their privilege to move as 
radiant queens. I have known them thrown back upon 
themselves, until they have become bitter railers against 
their husbands — uncomfortable companions — openly 
and shamelessly flouting their affection. I do not know 
what to make of the perverseness which induces a man 
to repel the advances of a heart which worships him, 
and to become hard and tyrannical in the degree by 
which that heart seeks to express its affection for him. 
There are husbands who would take the declaration that 
they do not love their wives as an insult, yet who hold 
the woman who loves them in fear and restraint through 
their whole life. I know wives who move about their 
houses with a trembling regard to the moods and no- 
tions of their husbands — wives who have no more liberty 
than slaves, who never spend a cent of money without 
a feeling of guilt, and who never give an order about the 
house without the same doubt of their authority that 



u6 Lessons in Life. 

they would have if they were only housekeepers, em- 
ployed at a very economical salary. I can think of no 
proper punishment for such husbands except daily 
ducking in a horse-pond, until reformation. Yet these 
asses are so unconscious of their detestable habits 
of feeling and life, that, probably, not one of them 
who reads this will think that I mean him, but will 
wonder where I have lived to fall in with such outlandish 
people. 

The most precious possession that ever comes to a 
man in this world is a woman's heart. Why some grace- 
ful and most amiable women whom I know will persist 
in loving some men whom I also know, is more than I 
know. I will not call their love an exhibition of per- 
verseness, though it looks like it ; but that these men 
with these rich, sweet hearts in their hands grow sour 
and snappish, and surly and tyrannical and exacting, is 
the most unaccountable thing in the world. If a pig 
will not allow himself to be driven, he will follow a man 
who offers him corn, and he will eat the corn, even 
though he puts his feet in the trough ; but there are men 
—some of them of Christian professions— who take 
every tenderness their wives bring them, and every ex- 
pression of affection, and every service, and every 
yearning sympathy, and trample them under feet with- 
out tasting them, and without a look of gratitude in 
their eyes. Hard, cold, thin-blooded, white-livered, 
contemptible curmudgeons— they think their wives weak 



Perverseness. 1 1 7 

and foolish, and themselves wise and dignified ! I beg 
my readers to assist me in despising them. I do not 
feel adequate to the task of doing them justice. 

There is another exhibition of perverseness which we 
sometimes see in families. There will be, perhaps, 
from two to half a dozen sisters in a family, amiable all 
of them. Now, think of the reasons which should bind 
them together in the tenderest sympathy. They were 
born of the same mother, they were nursed at the same 
heart, they were cradled under the same roof by the 
same hand, they have knelt at the side of the same 
father, their interests, trials, associates, standing — 
every thing concerning their family and social life — are 
the same. The honor of one intimately concerns the 
honor of the other, yet I have known such families of 
sisters fly apart the moment they became in any way 
independent of each other, as if they were natural ene- 
mies. I have seen them take the part of a friend 
against any member of the family band, and become 
disgusted with one another's society. Where matters 
have not gone to this length, I have seen sisters who 
would never caress each other, or, by any but the most 
formal and dignified methods, express their affection 
for each other. I have seen them live together for 
months and years as inexpressive of affection for each 
other as cattle in a stall — more so : for I have seen a 
cow affectionately lick her neighbor's ear by the half- 
hour, while among these girls I have failed to see a kiss, 



1 1 8 Lessons in Life. 

or hear a tender word, or witness any exhibition of sis- 
terly affection whatever. 

One of the most common forms of perverseness, 
though one of the most subtle and least known, is that 
shown by people who study to shut everybody out from 
a knowledge of their nature and their life. They make 
it their grand end and aim to appear to be exactly what 
they are not, to appear to believe exactly what they do 
not believe, and to appear to feel what they do not feel 
at all. This is not because they are ashamed of them- 
selves, or because they really have any thing to conceal. 
They have simply taken on this form of perverseness. 
They will not, if they can help it, allow any man to get 
inside of their natures and characters. If they write 
you a letter, they will mislead you. They will say to 
you irreverent and shocking things, to prove to you that 
they are bold, and unfeeling, and unthoughtful, when 
they tremble at what they have written, and really show 
by their language that they are afraid, and full of feel- 
ing, and very thoughtful. If they have a sentiment of 
love for anybody, they take it as a dog would a bone, 
and go and dig a hole in the ground and bury it, only 
resorting to it in the dark, for private craunching. Very 
likely they will try to make you believe that they live a 
most dainty and delicate life — that the animals of the 
field, and the fowls of the air love them, and come at 
their call — that clouds arrange themselves in heaven for 
their benefit, and are sufficiently paid for the effort by 



Perverseness. 119 

their admiration — that flowers excite them to frenzy — a 
very fine frenzy, indeed — and that all sounds shape 
'themselves to music in their souls. They would have 
'you think that they live a kind of charmed life — that 
the sun woos them, and the moon pines for them, and 
the sea sobs because they will not come, and the daisies 
wait lovingly for their feet, yet, if you knew the truth, 
you would see that they sit discontentedly among the 
homeliest surroundings of domestic life, with their 
sleeves rolled up — confound them ! 

This variety of perverseness seems very inexplic- 
able. I have seen much of it, but do not know what to 
make of it. There is doubtless something morbid in 
it. It is often carried to such extremes, and managed 
so artfully, that multitudes are deceived by it. I know 
of some very beautiful natures that pass in the world 
for rough and coarse. I know men who have the repu- 
tation of being hard and harsh, yet who are, inside, and 
in their own consciousness, as gentle and sensitive as 
women — who put on a stern air and a repellant man- 
ner, when they are really yearning for sympathy. I 
have seen this air and manner broken through and bat- 
tered down by a friendly man, who found what he sus- 
pected behind it — a generous, warm, noble heart. This 
perverseness seems to be akin to that of the miser who 
knows he is rich, takes his highest delight in being rich, 
and yet dresses meanly, and fares like a beggar rather 
than be thought rich. Women hide themselves more 



120 Lessons hi Life. 

than men. They are generally more sensitive, and their 
life and circumscribed habits have a tendency to the 
formation of morbid moods, and this among the num- 
ber. 

Of the perverseness of partisanship in politics much 
is written, and my pen need not dip into it ; but there 
is a perverseness exhibited by Christian churches in 
their quarrels that should be exposed and discussed, 
because some people have an impression that it may 
possibly be piety. " For dum squizzle, read perma- 
nence" said an editor, correcting a typographical error 
that had found its way into his journal. It seems as 
strange that perverseness should be mistaken for piety, 
as that "permanence" should be mistaken for "dum 
squizzle," but I believe it often is. Let some little 
cause of disturbance arise, and become active in a 
church, and it is astonishing how both parties go to 
work and pray over it. The pastor, perhaps, has sajd 
something on the subject of slavery, or he does not 
preach doctrine enough, or he preaches the wrong sort 
of doctrine, or he does not visit his people enough, or 
there is " a row" about the singing, or about a change 
in the hymn-books, or about repairing the church, or 
buying an organ, or something or other, and straight- 
way sides are taken, and the wills of both parties get 
roused. It is sometimes laughable — it would always 
be, only that it is too sad — to see how quickly both 
parties grow pious, as they grow perverse. It would 



Perverseness. 121 

seem, as the strife waxes hot that the glory of God 
was never so much in their hearts as now. They pray 
with fervor, they are constant in their public religious 
duties, they pass through the most scrupulous self-ex- 
aminations, and then fight on to the bitter end ; be- 
lieving, I suppose, that they are really doing God ser- 
vice, when they are only gratifying their own perverse 
wills. 

Churches have been ruined, or divided, or crippled 
in their power, by a cause of a quarrel too insignificant 
to engage the minds of sensible worldly men for an 
hour. I have heard it said that church quarrels are 
the most violent of all quarrels, because religious feel- 
ings are the strongest feelings of our nature. I confess 
that I do not see the force of this statement, for it does 
not appear to me that religious feelings have much to 
do with these quarrels. I can much more easily see 
why all personal differences should be adjusted peace- 
ably in a church, for there it is supposed that the indi- 
vidual will is subordinated to the cause of religion and 
the general good. The real basis of the bitterness of 
church quarrels is women. There are no others, ex- 
cept neighborhood quarrels, in which women mingle, 
and a neighborhood quarrel will at once be recognized 
as more like a church quarrel than any other. Women 
have strong feelings, are attracted or repulsed through 
their sensibilities, conceive keen likes and dislikes, do 
not stop to reason, and are, of course, the readiest and 



122 Lessons in Life, 

the most devoted partisans. If the mouths of the wo- 
men could only be smothered in a church quarrel, it 
would be settled much easier. Of all the perverse 
creatures in this world, a woman who has thoroughly 
committed herself to any man, or any cause, is the least 
tractable and reasonable. I hope this statement will 
not offend my sweet friends, because it is so true that 
I cannot conscientiously retract it. 

What the books call pride of opinion, is, nine cases in 
ten, simple perverseness. I know a most venerable 
public teacher of physiology, whose early theory .of the 
production of animal heat — very ridiculous in itself — is 
still yearly announced from his desk, notwithstanding 
the fact that the whole world has received another, 
whose soundness is demonstrated beyond all question. 
As he, year after year, declares his belief that animal 
heat is produced by corpuscular friction in the circula- 
ting blood, there is a twinkle of the eyes among his 
amused auditors which says very plainly — " the old gen- 
tleman does not believe this, himself." The youngest 
student before him knows better than to give his theory 
a moment's consideration. Well, the old Doctor is not 
alone. The world is full of this kind of thing. Men ad- 
here to old opinions and old policies long after they have 
learned that that they are shallow or untenable, not 
from a genuine pride of opinion, (I doubt very much 
whether there really is any thing that should be called 
pride of opinion,) but from genuine perverseness of dis- 



Perverseness. 123 

position. Men will give, in some heated moment, an 
opinion touching some one's character or powers, and, 
though that opinion be proved to be wrong a thousand 
times, they will never acknowledge that they have made 
a mistake. This is simple perverseness, of the meanest 
variety. There are some kinds of perverseness which 
impress one not altogether unpleasantly, but this affects 
a man with equal anger and disgust. 

Perverseness is a sign of weakness — nay, an element 
of weakness — in man or woman. It is no legitimate 
part of a true character. The generous, outspoken man, 
who is not afraid to show himself, and what there is in 
him, who cares more about the right way than his way, 
who throws away an opinion as he would throw away 
an old hat, the moment he finds.it is worthless, and 
who good-naturedly allows the frictions of society to 
straighten out all the kinks there are in him, is the 
strong man always, and always the one whom men love. 
Perverseness is really moral strabismus, and I am 
shocked to think what a multitude of squint-eyed souls 
there will be when we come to look into one another's 
faces in the " undress of immortality. " 



LESSON X. 

UNDEVELOPED RESOURCES. 

"The world is God's seed-bed. He has planted deep and multitudi- 
nously, and many things there are which have not yet come up." 

— Beecher. 

ONE of the richest and best of the smaller class of 
American cities is New Bedford ; and the secret of 
its wealth and beauty is oil It is but a few years since 
the immense fleet of vessels that made that thrifty port 
their home went out with certainty of success in their 
dangerous enterprises, and came back loaded down with 
spoil. All that beautiful wealth was won from the deep, 
and for years as many ships came and went as there 
were dwellings to give them speed and welcome. But 
the glory and the gain of the whale-fishery are past. 
The noble prey, too persistently and mercilessly pur- 
sued, has retired northward, and hidden among the ice- 
bergs. Now, when a ship's crew win a cargo, they win 
it from the clutches of eternal frost. It seems certain 
that the fishery will dwindle, year after year, until, at 



Undeveloped Resources. 125 

last, only a few adventurers will linger near the pole, to 
watch for the rare game that once furnished light for the 
civilized world. All this is very unpleasant for New 
Bedford ; but are we to have no more oil ? Is nature 
failing ? Will the time come when people must sit in 
darkness ? 

A few years ago a man in Pennsylvania took it into 
his head to probe the ground for the source of a certain 
oil that made its appearance upon the surface. Down, 
down into the bowels of the earth he thrust his steam- 
driven harpoon, until he touched the living fountain of 
oil, which, gushing up, half drowned him. Now, all the 
region round about him swarms with industry. Thou- 
sands of men are hurrying to and fro ; the puff of the 
engine is heard everywhere ; tens of thousands of bar- 
rels of oil are rolled out and turned into the channels of 
commerce ; eager-eyed speculators throng all the con- 
verging avenues of travel, and a waiting world of con- 
sumers take the oil as fast as it is produced. Men in 
Virginia, New York, and Ohio are awaking to the con- 
sciousness that, while they have been paying for oil from 
the far Pacific, they have been living within three hun- 
dred feet of deposits greater than all the cargoes that 
ever floated in New Bedford harbor. For hundreds, 
and, probably, for thousands of years, men have walked 
over these deposits with no suspicion of their existence. 
Geologists have looked wise, as is their habit, but have 
given no hint of them. 



126 Lessons in Life. 

The simple truth appears to be that when, in the his- 
tory of the world, it became necessary for these firmly- 
fastened store-houses of oil to be uncovered, they were 
uncovered. Nature had held them for untold thousands 
of years for just this emergency. When the whales 
ceased spouting, the earth took up the business ; and 
" here she blows" and " there she blows" are heard in 
Tideoute and Titusville, while New Bedford sits sadly 
by the sea, and thinks of long absent crews to whom the 
cry has become strange. 

I cannot but look upon this discovery of oil in the 
earth as one of the most remarkable and instructive 
revelations of the age. It has shown to me that, when- 
ever human necessity demands anything of the world 
of matter, the demand will be honored. Whenever 
animal life, or the muscle of man or brute, has shown 
itself unequal to the wants of an age, Nature has always 
responded to the cry for help. Inventors are only men 
who act as pioneers, and who go fonvard to see what the 
human race will want next, and to make the necessary 
provisions. An inventor has profound faith in the ex- 
haustless resources of nature. He knows that if he 
bores far enough, and bores in the right direction, he 
will find that which the world needs. He is often no 
more than the discoverer of a secret which nature has 
kept for the satisfaction of the wants of an age. A lake 
yoked to a coal-bed would generally be voted a slow 
team, but the inventor of the steam-engine saw how it 



Undeveloped Resources, 127 

could be made a very fast and a very powerful one ; and 
we who live now are able to see that the discovery was 
made at the right time, and that, for the emergencies of 
this latter day, it has almost infinitely multiplied the 
power of civilized man. 

Think how nature has risen grandly up to meet every 
occasion for new resources. The revolution wrought by 
steam in the business of the world created great wants, 
every one of which was filled as soon as felt. Quicker 
modes of communicating thought were needed to give 
us all the advantages of the increased facility of car- 
riage, and Mr. Morse was permitted to uncover the tele- 
graph. More money was wanted for the increased busi- 
ness of the world, and the gold fields of California and 
Australia were unveiled. It has always been so. In the 
march of the human race along the track of history, 
nature has pulled aside the veil in which she hides her 
treasures, to display that which she has kept in store for 
every epoch. In all the future I have no doubt that 
whenever oil shall be wanted, oil will be had for the 
boring. The world is fitted up with supplies for all the 
probable and possible wants of the human race. We 
are treading every day upon the lids of great secrets that 
await the wants of the larger style and finer type of life 
that lie before us. Discovery has but just begun, and 
will, I doubt not, be as rife in future ages as in this. 
There is no end of it : yet the world is a thing to be 
weighed and measured. It is so many miles around it, 



128 Lessons in Life. 

and so many miles through it. Never mind ; it has 
more in it than humanity can exhaust. 

When we talk of the material world, especially in its 
relation to the constantly developing wants of man, we 
talk simply of the kitchen and larder of humanity. 
We have not ascended into the drawing-room, or con- 
servatory. The moment we step out of the consid- 
eration of manifested nature, we come into a world 
which may neither be weighed nor measured — the world 
of thought. I suppose that no author has ever entered 
a large library and stood in its alcoves and studied its 
titles long without asking himself the question : " What 
is there left for me to do ? " It seems as if men had 
been reaching in all directions for the discovery of 
thought since time began, and as if there were abso- 
lutely nothing new to be said upon any subject. Yet 
every age has always demanded its peculiar food, and 
every age has managed to get it. Certain great and 
peculiarly fruitful subjects, blowing in the sea of thought, 
have attracted whole fleets of authors for many years, 
and they are doubtless chased away no more to return ; 
but, here and there, while time shall last, strong men 
will bore down to deposits of thought unsuspected by 
any of the preceding generations of men, and there will 
gush up streams to light the nations of the world. For 
the world of thought is, by its nature, exhaustless. The 
world of thought is the world in which God lives, and 
it is infinite like himself. We reach our hands out into 



Undeveloped Resources. 129 

the dark in any direction, and find a thought. It was 
God's before it was ours ; and on beyond that thought, 
lies another, and still another, ad infinitum. If our 
arms were long enough, we should be able to grasp 
them as well as the first. All that it wants is the long 
arm to give us the command of. deposits that would 
astonish the world. Authors have become eminent 
according to their power to reach further than others out 
into the infinite atmosphere of thought which envelops 
them. 

Authors, like inventors, are rarely more than discov- 
erers. If God, who is omniscient, sees all truth, and 
apprehends the relations of every truth to every other 
truth, all an author can do is, of course, to find out what 
God's thoughts are. And every age is certain to find 
out the thought that is essential to it. When the world 
had exhausted Aristotle, and the wide school of philoso- 
phers who embraced him in their systems, Bacon, self- 
instituted, stepped before the world as its teacher. He 
came when he was wanted, and his age gave him audi- 
ence, and took the better path which he pointed out to 
it. It was in the golden age of the drama — the age in 
which the drama was what it never was before, and will 
never be again — a great agent of civilization — that Shak- 
speare appeared. We call his plays creations, but 
surely they were not his. He no more than discovered 
them. The reason why they stir us so much is that God 

created them. His age wanted them, and he had the in- 
6* 



130 Lessons in Life, 

sight into the world of thought which enabled him to enter 
in and lead them out. The reason why we have not had 
any great dramatist since, is, that succeeding ages have 
not needed one. The great men of later ages have not 
recognized the drama as a want of their particular time. 
I am aware that there is nothing in this to feed human 
pride, but I do not recognize food for human pride as a 
want of any age. 

We are in the habit of talking of the old authors ; 
and we read them as if we supposed them wiser than 
ourselves. We try to feed on the thought which they 
discovered, but it is in the main very innutritious fod- 
der, and the world is learning the fact. We read and 
reverence old books less, and read and regard news- 
papers a great deal more. The thought which our own 
age produces is that which we are learning to prize most. 
We buy beautiful editions of Scott, but we read Dickens 
and Thackeray and Mrs. Stowe, in weekly and monthly 
numbers. Milton, in half-calf, stands upon the shelves 
of our library undisturbed, while we cut the leaves of 
"Festus;" and Keats and Byron and Shelley are all 
pushed aside that we may converse with Longfellow and 
Mrs. Browning. It is not, perhaps, that the later are 
the greater, but, being informed with the spirit of the 
age in which we have our life, moving among the facts 
which concern us, and conscious of our want, they ap- 
prehend the true relations of their age to the world of 
thought around them. They see where the sources of 



Undeveloped Resources. 131 

oil are exhausted, and bore for new deposits. It is a 
comfort to know that they can never bore in vain. 

We may be sure that literature will always be as fresh 
as it has been. It is possible that we may never have 
greater men than Shakspeare and Milton, and Dante 
and Goethe ; but there is nothing to hinder our having 
men just as great. Those who are to come will only 
bore in different directions, and find new deposits. 
Shakspeare and Milton were great writers, but the 
fields they occupied were their own. They do not re- 
semble each other in any particular. Dante and Goethe 
were great writers, but there are no points of resem- 
blance between them. When Scott was issuing his won- 
derful series of novels, it seemed to his contemporaries, 
I suppose, that there was no field left for a successor ; 
yet Dickens, in the next generation, won more readers 
and as much admiration as he, in a field whose exist- 
ence Scott never suspected. Very different is the world 
of thought from the world of matter, in the fact that its 
deposits are found in no particular spot. The mind can 
go out in quest of thought in no direction without re- 
ward ; and every man receives from his age motive and 
culture which peculiarly prepare him for the work of 
supplying its needs. There are some who seem to think 
that the golden age of literature is past — that nothing 
modern is worthy of notice, and that it is one of the 
vices of the age that we discard so much the teachings 
of the literary fathers. But the world of thought is ex- 



132 Lessons in Life. 

haustless, and we have only to produce a finer civiliza- 
tion than the world has ever seen, to secure, as its con- 
summate flower, a literature of corresponding excel- 
lence. 

What has been said of the world of matter and the 
world of thought, may be said, and is implied, of the 
world of men. We are accustomed to say that great 
emergencies make great men. But this is not true. 
Great men are always found to meet great emergencies : 
but God makes them, and leads them through a course 
of discipline which prepares them for their work. It is 
one of the remarkable facts of history, so patent that all 
have seen and acknowledged it, that to meet every great 
epoch a man has been prepared. I mean it in no irre- 
verent or theological sense when I say that there has been 
a series of Christs, whose appearance has denoted the 
departure of old dispensations and the inauguration of 
new. Men have arisen who have torn down temples, and 
demolished idols, and swept away systems, and knocked 
off fetters, and introduced their age into a freer, better, 
and larger life ; and it will always be so while time shall 
last. Men will arise equal to the wants of their age 
wherever men are civilized. The causes which produce 
emergencies are the agents which educate men to meet 
them ; and nature is prodigal of her material among 
men, as among the things made for his service. 

When, in the history of Christianity, it became neces- 
sary to re-assert and emphasize the truth that "the just 



Undeveloped Resources. 133 

shall live by faith," Luther was raised up ; and nothing 
is more apparent to the student than that the age which 
produced him demanded him — that he fitted into his 
age, supplied its wants, and cut a new channel, through 
which the richest life of the world has flowed for centu- 
ries. He found his country tied up to formalism, scho- 
lasticism, and tradition ; and by strokes as remarkable 
for boldness as strength he set it free. He stands at the 
head of a great historical epoch, which was prepared to 
receive and crown him. 

Shall the world of matter never fail — shall the world 
of thought be exhaustless — shall men be found for all 
the emergencies of their race, and, yet, shall divine 
truth be contained in a nut-shell ? Must the human 
soul lack food — fresh food — because a generation long 
gone 'has decided that only certain food is fit for the hu- 
man soul ? I believe that the Bible is a revelation of 
divine truth to men, and, believing this, I believe that 
its most precious deposits have hardly been touched. 
I believe that in it, there is special food prepared for 
all the wide variety of human souls, and that, as genera- 
tion after generation passes away, new deposits will be 
struck, so rich in illuminating power that their discover- 
ers will wonder they had never been seen before. I 
know that just before me, or somewhere before me, there 
is a generation of men who think less of being saved, 
and more of being worth saving, less of dogma, and 
more of duty, less of law, and more of love ; whose wor- 



134 Lessons in Life. 

ship will be less formal, and more truthful and spiritual, 
and whose God will be a more tender and considerate 
father, and less a lawgiver and a judge. For such a 
generation, there exists a deposit of divine truth almost 
unknown by Christendom. Only here and there have 
men gathered it, floating upon the surface. The great 
deposit waits the touch of another age. 



LESSON XL 

GREATNESS IN LITTLENESS. 

"This earth with all its dust and tears 
Is no less his than yonder spheres ; 
And rain- drops weak and grains of sand 
Are stamped by his immediate hand." 

—Sterling. 

" There is a power 
Unseen, that rules the illimitable world ; 
That guides its motions, from the brightest star 
To the least dust of this sin- tainted world." 

— Thomson - . 

INFINITY lies below us as well as above us. There 
is as much essential greatness in littleness as in 
largeness. Mont Blanc — massive, ice-crowned, impe- 
rial — is a great work of nature ; yet it is only an aggre- 
gation of materials with which we are thoroughly 
familiar. It is only a larger mountain than that which 
lies within sight of my window. A dozen Monadnocks 
or Ascutneys or Holyokes, more or less, make a Mont 
Blanc, with glaciers and avalanches and brooding eter- 
nity of frost. Such greatness, though it impresses me 



136 Lessons in Life, 

much, is not beyond my comprehension. It can be 
reckoned by cubic miles. So with the sea : it is only 
an expanse of water larger than the river that winds 
through the meadows. It is great, but it is only an 
aggregate of numerable quantities that my eyes can 
measure, and my mind comprehend. These are great 
objects, and they are great particularly because they are 
large. They are above me, and they lead me upward 
toward creative infinity. 

If I turn my eyes in the other direction, however, 
I lose myself in infinity quite as readily. If I pick up a 
pebble at the foot of Mont Blanc, and undertake the ex- 
amination of its structure, — the elements which com- 
pose it, the relations of those elements to each other, 
the mode of their combination — I am lost as readily as 
I should be in following the footsteps of the stars. If I 
undertake to look through a drop of water, I may be 
arrested at first, indeed, by the sports and struggles of 
animalcular life ; but at length I find myself gazing be- 
yond it into infinitude — using it as a lens through which 
the Godhead becomes visible to me. I can dissect from 
one another the muscles and arteries and veins and 
nerves and vital viscera of the human body, but the lit- 
tle insect that taps a vein upon my hand does it with an 
instrument and by the operation of machinery which are 
beyond my scrutiny. They belong to a life and are 
the servants of instincts which I do not understand at all. 

These thoughts come to me, borne by certain mem- 



Greatness in Littleness, 137 

ories. I know a venerable gentleman of Buffalo — Dr. 
Scott — who did very great things in a very small way. 
At the age of seventy he became conscious of decay- 
ing power of vision. Being professionally a physician 
and naturally a philosopher, he conceived the idea that 
the eye might be improved by what he denominated a 
series of " ocular gymnastics." He therefore undertook 
to exercise his eyes upon the formation of minute let- 
ters — working upon them until the organs began to be 
weary, and then, like a prudent man, resting for hours. 
By progressing slowly and carefully, he became, at 
last, able to do wonders in the way of fine writing, and 
also became able to read the newspapers without glasses. 
Now, reader, prepare for a large story ; but be assured 
that it is true, and that my hands have handled, and 
my eyes seen the things of which I tell you. At the age 
of seventy-one, Dr. Scott wrote upon an enamelled card 
with a stile, on space exactly equal to that of one side 
of a three-cent piece, — The Lord's Prayer, the Apostles' 
Creed, the Parable of the Ten Virgins, the Parable 
of the Rich Man and Lazarus, the Beatitudes, the fif- 
teenth Psalm, the one hundred and twentieth Psalm, 
the one hundred and thirty-third Psalm, and the one 
hundred and thirty-first Psalm, and the figures " i860." 
Every word, every letter, and every point of all 
these passages was written exquisitely on this minute 
space ; and that old man not only saw every mark 
he made, but had the delicacy of muscular action 



138 Lessons in Life. 

and steadiness of nerve to form the letters so beauti- 
fully that they abide the test of the highest magnify- 
ing power. They were, of course, written by micro- 
scopic aid. 

Now who believes that it does not require more ge- 
nius and skill to execute this minute work than it does 
to bore a Hoosac tunnel, or build a Victoria bridge, or 
put a dam across the Connecticut, or construct an Erie 
canal ? I do not speak of the relative importance of the 
great works and the small, but of the relative amount 
and quality of the power that is brought to bear upon 
them. In a very important sense the greatest thing a 
man can do is the most difficult thing he can do. The 
most difficult thing a man can do may not be the most 
useful, or in any sense the most important ; but it will 
measure and show the limits of his power. Work grows 
difficult as it goes below a man, quite as rapidly as it 
does when it rises above him. It costs as much skill to 
make a dainty bit of jewelry as it does to carve a colossal 
statue. It actually costs more power to make the chain 
of gold that holds the former, than it does to forge the 
clumsy links by which the latter is dragged to its loca- 
tion. Thus, whether man goes down or up, he soon 
gets beyond the sphere of his power. The further he 
can carry himself in either direction the more does he 
demonstrate his superiority over the majority of men. 
The more difficult the task which he performs the 
further does he reach toward infinity. 



Greatness in Littleness. 139 

In the town of Waltham there is a manufactory of 
watches which I have examined with great interest. It 
is here undertaken to organize the skill which has been 
achieved by thousands of patient hands, and submit it 
to machinery ; and it is done. Every thing is so sys- 
tematized, and the operations are carried on with such 
exactness, that, among a hundred watches, correspond- 
ing parts may be interchanged without embarrassment 
to the machinery. The different parts are passed from 
hand to hand, and from machine to machine, each hand 
and each machine simply doing its duty, and when from 
different and distant rooms these parts are assembled, 
and cunning fingers put them together, every wheel 
knows its place, and every pivot and every screw its 
home, though it be picked without discrimination from 
a dish containing ten thousand. Yet among these parts 
there are screws of which it takes one hundred and fifty 
thousand to make a pound, and shafts and bearings 
which are so delicately turned that five thousand shav- 
ings will only extend a lineal inch along the steel. This 
is the way American watches are made, and this is the 
way in which the highest practicable perfection is 
reached in the manufacture of these pocket monitors. 

Here we have small work, organized, and great elab- 
oration of related details. When Dr. Scott wrote his 
passages on the card, his work was very simple. He 
did only one thing — he made letters. When he had 
made letter after letter until the little space was filled, 



140 Lessons in Life. 

his work was done. It was not a part of some compli- 
cated and inter-dependent whole, related to a thousand 
other parts in other hands. I suppose it may be as deli- 
cate work to drill a jewel with a hair of steel, armed with 
paste of diamond-dust, as to write " Our Father " 
under a microscope ; but when the jewel has to be 
drilled with relation to the reception of a revolving me- 
tallic pivot, the process becomes very much nicer. So 
here are a hundred processes going on at the same time, 
in different parts of a building, all related to each other, 
each delicate almost beyond description, and effected 
with such precision that a mistake is so much an excep- 
tion that it is a surprise. I have seen the huge steam 
engines at Scranton which furnish power for the blast of 
the furnaces there, and their magnitude and power and 
most impressive majesty of movement have made me 
tremble ; yet as works of man they are no greater than 
a Waltham watch. 

It seems to me that man occupies a position just half 
way between infinite greatness and infinite littleness, 
and that he can neither ascend nor descend to any con- 
siderable degree without bringing up against a wall 
which shows w T here man ends and God begins. It 
seems, too, that that kind of human power which can 
reach down deepest into the infinite littleness, is more 
remarkable than that which rises highest toward the infi- 
nite greatness. It is a more difficult and a more re- 
markable thing to write the Lord's Prayer on a single 



Greatness in Littleness. 141 

line less than an inch long, than it would be to paint it 
on the face of the Palisades, upon a line a mile long, in 
letters the length of the painter's ladder. I have heard 
of a watch so small that it was set in a ring, and worn 
upon the finger ; and such a watch seems very much 
more marvellous to me than the engines of the Great 
Eastern. 

We are in the habit of regarding God as the author 
of all the great movements of the universe, but as hav- 
ing nothing to do directly with the minor movements. 
Mr. Emerson becomes equally flippant and irreverent 
when he speaks of a " pistareen Providence." We 
kindly take the Creator and upholder of all things under 
our patronage, and say, " it is very well for him to swing 
a star into space., and set bounds to the sea, and order 
the goings of great systems, and even to minister to the 
lives of great men, but when it comes to meddling with 
the little affairs of the daily life of a thousand millions 
of men, women, and children — pshaw ! He's above all 
that." 

Not so fast, Mr. Emerson ! The real reason why you 
and all those who are like you do not believe in God's 
intimate cognizance and administration of human affairs 
is, that you cannot comprehend them. You have not 
faith enough in God to believe that he is able to main- 
tain this knowledge of human affairs, this interest in 
them, and the power and the disposition to mould them 
to divine issues. You are willing to admit that God can 



142 Lessons in Life. 

do a few great things, but you are not willing to admit 
that he can do a great many little things. It is well 
enough, according to your notion, for God to make a 
mastodon, or a megatherium, but quite undignified for 
him to undertake a mosquito or a house-fly. It would 
not compromise His reputation with you were you to 
catch Him lighting a sun, or watching with something 
of interest the rise and fall of a great nation, but actu- 
ally to listen to the prayer of a little child, and to an- 
swer that prayer with distinctness of purpose and defi- 
nite exercise of power, would not, in your opinion, be 
dignified and respectable business for a being whom you 
are proud to have the honor of worshipping ! 

I do not know how these people who do not believe 
in the intimate special providence of God can believe in 
God at all. I can conceive how God could rear Mont 
Blanc, but I cannot conceive how He could make a 
honey bee, and endow that honey bee with an instinct — 
transmitted since the creation from bee to bee, and 
swarm to swarm — which binds it in membership to a 
commonwealth, and enables it to build its waxen cells 
with mathematical exactness, and gather honey from all 
the flowers of the field. It is when we go into the in- 
finity below us that the infinite power and skill become 
the most evident. When the microscope shows us life 
in myriad forms, each of which exhibits design ; when 
we contemplate vegetable life in its wonderful detail ; 
when chemistry reveals to us something of the marvel- 



Greatness in Littleness. 143 

lous processes by which vitality is fed, we get a more 
impressive sense of the power and skilj. of the Creator 
than we do when we turn the telescope toward the heav- 
ens. Yet Mr. Emerson would have us believe that the 
Being who saw fit to make all these little things, to ar- 
range and throw into relation all these masses of detail, 
to paint the plumage of a bird, and the back of a fly, as 
richly as he paints the drapery of the descending sun, 
does not condescend to take practical interest in the af- 
fairs of men and women ! My God, what blindness ! 
Bird, bee, blossom — be my teacher. I do not like Mr. 
Emerson's lesson. 

The logical sequence of disbelief in what Mr. Emer- 
son calls a " pistareen Providence " is a belief in pan- 
theism or polytheism. There is certainly nothing ridic- 
ulous in the faith that the Being who contrived and ar- 
ranged, and adjusted the infinite littlenesses of creation, 
and ordained their laws, and who continues their exist- 
ence, maintains an intimate interest in the only intelli- 
gent creatures he has placed in this world. The little 
bird that sings to me, the bee that bears me honey, 
the blossom that brings me perfume, all testify to me 
that He who created them will not neglect nor forget 
His own child. If I look up into the firmament, and 
send my imagination into its deep abysses, and think 
that further than even dreams can go, those abysses are 
strewn with stars ; if I think of comets coming and 
going with the rush of lightning, and yet occupying 



1 44 Lessons in Life. 

whole centuries in their journey ; or if I only sit down 
by the sea, and think of the waves that kiss other 
shores thousands of miles away, I am oppressed by 
,a sense of my own littleness. I ask the question 
whether the God who has such large things in His care, 
can think of me — a speck on an infinite aggregate of 
surface — a mote uneasily shifting in the boundless space. 
I get no hope in this direction ; but I look down, and 
find that the shoulders of all inferior creation are under 
me, lifting me into the very presence of God. I find 
that God has been at work below me, in a mass of mi- 
nute and munificent detail, by the side of which my life is 
great and simple, and satisfyingly significant. 

So, if I may not believe in a " pistareen Provi- 
dence," I must make a God of the universe itself, or 
pass into the hands of many Gods the world's creation 
and governance. If the God that made the bee, and 
the ant, and the daisy, made me, then He is not above 
taking care of me, and of maintaining an interest in the 
smallest affairs of my life. The faith that lives in rea- 
son is never stronger than when it stands on flowers. 
There is not a fly that floats, nor a fish that swims, nor 
an animalcule that navigates its little drop of sea-spray, 
but bears a burden of hope to despairing humanity. 
" If God so clothe the grass which to-day is, and to- 
morrow is cast into the oven," then what, Mr. Emer- 
son ? 

This subject is a very large one, and I can present 



Greatness in Littleness. 145 

only one more phase of it. A great multitude — the 
larger part, in fact — of the human race are engaged in 
doing small work. It may be a comfort for them to 
know that the Almighty Maker of all things has done 
a great deal of the same kind of work, and has not 
found it unworthy or unprofitable employment. Let 
them remember that it is just as hard to do a small 
thing well as a large thing, and that the difficulty of a 
deed is the gauge of the power required for its doing. 
Let them remember that when they go down, they are 
going just as directly toward infinity as when they go 
up, and that every man who works Godward, works 
in honor. 

It was a very forcible reflection to which a visitor 
at Niagara Falls gave utterance, when he said that, 
considering the relative power of their authors, he did 
not regard the cataract as so remarkable a piece of 
work as the Suspension Bridge ; and it may be said 
with truth that there is no work within the power of 
man so small that God has not been below it in a 
work smaller and perhaps humbler still, — certainly hum- 
bler when we consider the infinite majesty and the in- 
effable dignity of His character. My maid is too proud 
to go into the street for a pail of milk ; my God smiles 
upon me in flowers from the very gutter. My neigh- 
bor thinks it beneath him to till the soil, working with 
his hands, but the Being who made him, breathes upon 
that soil, and works in it, that it may bear food to keep 
7 



146 Lessons in Life. 

human dignity from starving. There are men who set 
themselves above driving a horse, no part of which the 
King of the universe was above making. Ah ! human 
pride ! Alas ! human dignity ! I do not know what 
to make of you. 



LESSON XII. 

RURAL LIFE. 

" Going into a village at night, with the lights gleaming on each side of 
the street, in some houses they will be in the basement and nowhere else." 

— Beecher. 

"The little God o' the world jogs on the same old way, 
And is as singular as on the world's first day. 
A pity 'tis thou shouldst have given 

The fool, to make him worse, a gleam of light from heaven ; 
He calls it reason, using it 
To be more beast than ever beast was yet. 
He seems to me (your grace the words will pardon) 
Like a long-legged grasshopper, in the garden, 
Forever on the wing, and hops and sings 
The same old song, as in the grass he springs." 

— Goethe's Faust. 

IT is a common remark that a railroad car is an ex- 
cellent place in which to study human nature ; but 
the particular phase of human nature which is usually 
presented there is not, I think, sufficiently attractive to 
engage a man who desires to maintain a good opinion 
of his race. I do not like to study even my own nature 
there, for I find that the more I ride, the more selfish I 



14-3 Lessons in Life. 

become, and the more desirable it seems to me that I 
should occupy the space usually assigned to four men, 
viz. : two seats for my feet, and two for such other 
portions of my person as. are not required for spanning 
the space between the sofas. It must be a matter of 
regret to most persons, I am sure, that they are not 
large enough to cover twice as many seats as they do, 
and thus drive those who travel with them into more 
close and inconvenient quarters. Whenever I witness 
an instance of genuine, self-sacrificing politeness in a 
railroad car, I become aware that there is at least one 
man on the train who has travelled very little. No ; 
when I travel I turn my observation upon things outside 
— upon the farms and streams, and mountains and 
forests, and towns and villages through which the train 
bears me. I am particularly interested in the faces of 
those who gather at the smaller stations to gaze at the 
passengers, get the papers, and feel the rush, for a 
single moment, of the world's great life. I like to listen 
to the smart remarks of some rustic wit in shirt-sleeves, 
who, if the train should happen to be behind time, 
intimates to the brakeman that the old horse didn't have 
his allowance of oats that morning, or commiserates 
the loneliness of the conductor of a train not crowded 
with passengers, — all of which is intended for the ears 
of a village girl who stands in the door of the " Ladies 7 
Room," with the tip of a parasol in her teeth, and a 
hat on her head that was jaunty last year. 



Rural Life. 149 

Riding into the country recently, I saw at one of these 
little stations a pair of young men, leaning against the 
station-house. They had evidently been waiting for the 
approach of the train, but they did not stir from their 
positions. They were young men whose life had been 
spent in severe and unremitting toil. Their hands were 
large, and coarse, and brown ; their faces and necks 
were bronzed ; their clothing was of the commonest 
material and pattern, and was old and patched besides ; 
and they had a hard look generally. There was the 
usual bustle about them, but they did not seem to mind 
it. At last, they started, and these are the words that 
one of them spoke : " Come, Bob, let's go over and see 
if we can't tuck away some of that grub." So both 
turned their backs upon the train, and upon me ; and 
as they went over to see if they couldn't " tuck away 
some of that grub," I got a view of their heavy shoul- 
ders, and their shambling, awkward gait. A pair of 
old draft horses, going out in the morning to take their 
places in front of their truck, would not move more 
stiffly than those fellows moved. 

Now these young men taught me nothing, for I had 
seen many such before ; but through them I took a fresh 
and a very impressive glimpse into a style of life that 
abounds among the rural population of America, and 
shows but feeble signs of improvement. These men, 
who, when they eat, only " tuck away grub," of course 
"go to roost" when they sleep. They call the sun 



150 Lessons in Life. 

" Old Yaller," naming him in honor of a favorite ox. 
When they undress themselves " they peel off," as if 
they were onions or potatoes ; and when they put them- 
selves into their Sunday clothing, they " surprise their 
backs with a clean shirt." When they marry, they 
" hitch on," as if matrimony were a sled, and a wife 
were a saw-log. Every thing in their life is brought 
down to the animal basis, and why should it not be ? 
They labor as severely as any animal they own ; they 
are proud of their animal strength and endurance ; they 
eat, and work, and sleep, like animals, and they do 
nothing like men. Their frames are shaped by labor ; 
and they are only the best animals, and the ruling ani- 
mals, on their farms. As between the wives and chil- 
dren who live in their houses, and the horses and cattle 
that live in their barns, the latter have the easier time 
of it. 

Having brought every thing down to the animal basis 
in their homes and in their lives, their intercourse with 
other men will naturally betray the ideas upon which 
they live. They are usually very blunt men, who 
" never go round" to say any thing, but who blurt out 
what they have to say in a manner entirely regardless of 
the feelings of others. They enter each other's houses 
with their hats on, and " help themselves" when they 
sit at each other's tables, and affect great contempt for 
the courtesies and forms of polite life. They are ex- 
ceedingly afraid of being looked upon as " stuck up ; " 



Rural Life. 151 

and if they can get the reputation of being able to mow 
more grass, or pitch more hay, or chop and pile more 
wood, or cradle more grain, than any of their neighbors, 
their ambition is satisfied. There is no dignity of life in 
their homes. They cook and eat and live in the same 
room, and sometimes sleep there, if there should be 
room enough for a bed. There is no family life that is 
not associated with work, and no thought of any life 
that is not connected with bodily labor ; and if they sit 
down five minutes, either at home or at church, they go 
to sleep. Their highest intellectual exercise is that 
which is called out by the process of swapping horses, 
and the selling of their weekly product of eggs and but- 
ter at the highest market price. They invariably call 
their wives — " the old woman," or " she ; " and if they 
should stumble into saying, " my dear," in the presence 
of a neighbor, they would blush at being self-convicted 
of unjustifiable politeness and unpardonable weakness. 

These men have learned to read, but they rarely read 
any thing, except the weekly newspaper, taken exclu- 
sively for the probate notices. The only books in their 
houses are the Bible and two or three volumes forced 
upon them at unguarded moments by book-agents, who 
made the most of internal wood-cuts, and external 
Dutch metal to place them in possession of the '* His- 
tory of the World." or the " Lives of the Presidents," or 
some other production equally extensive and compre- 
hensive. There is no exhibition of taste about their 



152 Lessons in Life, 

dwellings. Every thing is brought down to the hard 
standard of use. If their wives should desire a border 
for flowers, they regard them as very silly, and look 
upon their attempts to " fix up things" as a great waste 
of labor. They never go out with their wives to mingle 
in the social life of their neighborhood ; and if the wives 
of their neighbors come to spend an afternoon, they har- 
ness their horses, and drive off to attend to some distant 
business that v/ill detain them until the women get away. 
It is useless to say to me that this is an extreme picture, 
for I know what I am writing about, and know that I am 
painting from the life. I know that there are hundreds 
of thousands of American farmers whose life and whose 
ideas of life are cast upon these models. Some of these 
are as coarse and hard as I paint them, and others are 
only a little better. 

Such a farmer's boy is brought up to the idea that 
work is the grand thing in life. Work, indeed, is sup- 
posed by him to be pretty much all of life. It is sup- 
posed to spoil farmers to get any thing but work into 
their heads ; and scientific agriculturists will bear wit- 
ness that they have been obliged to fight the popular 
prejudices against "book farming" at every step of their 
progress. They will also testify that the improvements 
made in farming and in the implements of agriculture 
have not been made by farmers themselves, but by out- 
siders — mechanics, and men of science — who have mar- 
velled at the brainless stupidity which toiled on in its 



Rural Life. 153 

old track of unreasoning routine, and looked with suspi- 
cion and discouragement upon innovations. The reason 
why the farmer has not been foremost in improving the 
instruments and methods of his own business, is, that 
his mind has been unfitted for improvement by the ex- 
cessive labors of his body. A man whose whole vital 
energy is directed to the support of muscle has, of 
course, none to direct to the support of thought. A 
man whose strength is habitually exhausted by bodily 
labor becomes, at length, incapable of mental exertion ; 
and I cannot help feeling that half of the farmers of the 
country establish insuperable obstacles to their own im- 
provement by their excessive toil. They are nothing 
more than the living machines of a calling which so far 
exhausts their vitality that they have neither the disposi- 
tion nor the power to improve either their calling or 
themselves. 

To a student or a literary man, it is easy to explain 
the necessity of the proper division of the nervous ener- 
gies between the mind and the body. Any student or 
literary man who has a daily mental task to do, will do 
it before he exercises his body to any great extent. If 
I should wish to unfit my mind for a day of literary 
labor, I would use the hoe in my garden for an early 
hour in the morning. If I should wish to unfit a pupil 
for his daily task of study, I would put him through an 
exhausting walk before breakfast. The direction of all 
the nervous energies to the support of the muscular sys- 



154 Lessons in Life. 

tern, and the necessary draft upon the digestive and 
nutritive functions to supply the muscular waste, leave 
the mind temporarily a bankrupt. I have never seen a 
man who was really remarkable for acquired muscular 
power, and, at the same time, remarkable for mental 
power. A man may be born into the world with a fine 
muscular system and a fine brain, and in early life his 
muscular system may have a fine development. Such a 
man may subsequently have a remarkable mental de- 
velopment, but this development will never be accom- 
panied by large and regular expenditures of muscular 
power. If I should wish to repress the mental growth 
and manifestation of a man, I would undertake to edu- 
cate him up to the point of lifting eight or ten kegs of 
nails. There is danger at first of overdoing our "mus- 
cular Christianity " — danger of getting more muscle than 
Christianity ; and there is a good deal more danger of 
overdoing our muscular intellectuality. The difference 
between the kind and amount of exercise necessary to 
produce a healthy machine and the kind and amount 
necessary to produce a powerful one, is very great. We 
are never to look for great intellectuality in a professor 
of gymnastics, nor to expect that the time will come 
when a man will not only walk a thousand miles in a 
thousand hours, but compose a poem of a thousand lines 
at the same time. 

If the temporary diversion of the nervous energy 
from the brain have this effect, what must a permanent 



Rural Life. 155 

diversion accomplish ? It will accomplish precisely 
what is indicated by the look and language of our two 
young friends at the station-house. It will develop mus- 
cle for the uses of a special calling, and make ugly and 
clumsy men of those who should be symmetrical ; and 
at the same time it will repress mental development, 
and permanently limit mental growth — at least, so long 
as the mind shall be associated with the body. I sup- 
pose that every fecundated germ of a human being is 
endowed with a certain possibility of development — a 
complement of vital energy which will be expended in 
various directions, according to the circumstances which 
may surround it and the will of its possessor. If it shall 
be mainly expended upon the growth and sustentation 
of muscle, it will not be expended upon the growth and 
sustentation of mind ; and I have no hesitation in say- 
ing that it is an absolute impossibility for a man who 
engages in hard bodily labor every day to be brilliant in 
intellectual manifestation. The tide of such a man's 
life does not set in that direction. An hour-glass has in 
it a definite quantity of sand ; and when I turn it over, 
that sand falls from the upper apartment into the lower ; 
and while it occupies that position it will continue to fall 
until the former is exhausted and the latter is filled. 
Moreover, it will never take its place at the other end 
of the instrument, until it is turned back. It is pre- 
cisely thus with a human constitution. The grand vital 
current moves only in one direction, and when it is mov- 



156 Lessons in Life. 

ing toward muscle it is not moving toward mind, and 
when it is moving toward mind it is not moving toward 
muscle. This fact is illustrated sufficiently by the phe- 
nomena of digestion. After a man has eaten a hearty 
dinner, he becomes dull, even to drowsiness or perfect 
sleep. Why? Simply because the tide of nervous en- 
ergy sets toward digestion, and there is not enough left 
to carry on mental or voluntary muscular operations. 

A resident of a city riding into the country, especially 
if he be an intellectual man, and engaged in intellectual 
pursuits, will be thrilled by what he sees around him. 
The life of the farmer, planted in the midst of so much 
that is beautiful, having to do with nature's marvellous 
miracles of germination and growth, moving under the 
open heaven with its glory of sky and meteoric change, 
and accompanied by the songs of birds and all charac- 
teristic rural sights and sounds, will seem to him the 
sweetest and the most enviable that falls to human lot. 
But the hard-working farmer sees nothing of this. What 
cares he for birds, unless they pull up his corn ? What 
cares he for skies, unless he can make use of them for 
drying his hay, or wetting down his potatoes ? The 
beautiful changes of nature do not touch him. His sen- 
sibilities are deadened by hard work. His nervous sys- 
tem is all imbedded in muscle, and does not lie near 
enough to the surface to be reached by the beauty and 
music around him. All he knows about a daisy is that 
it does not make good hay j and he draws no appreci- 



Rural Life. 157 

able amount of the pleasure of his life from those sur- 
roundings which charm the sensibilities of others. 

We are in the habit of regarding the farming popula- 
tion of the country as the most moral and religious of 
any, yet if we look at them critically, we shall find that 
their piety is of a negative, rather than a positive char- 
acter. They are men in the first place who have very 
few temptations, either from without or from within. 
There are no professional tempters around them to lure 
them into the more seductive paths of sin. The woman 
whose steps take hold on hell does not pass their doors ; 
the gambler spreads no snares for them ; no gilded 
palace invites them to music and intoxicating draughts ; 
they are not maddened by ambition ; and they have no 
vanity that leads them to degrading and ruinous dis- 
play. If they are little assailed from without, they 
are not more moved toward vice from within. The 
fact that their vital energies are all expended upon 
labor relieves them from the motives of temptation. 
Men whose muscles are overworked have no vitality to 
expend upon vices. The devil cannot make much out 
of a man who is both tired and sleepy. If we inquire 
of the ministers who have charge of rural parishes, they 
they will usually tell us that an audience of mechanics 
is better than an audience of farmers, and that the 
miscellaneous audience of a city is better than either. 
It is impossible for men who have devoted every bodily 
energy they possess to hard labor during the waking 



158 Lessons in Life. 

hours of six days, to go to church and keep brightly 
awake on the seventh. Country ministers will also ad- 
mit that they have in their parishes less help in social 
and conference meetings than the pastors of city par- 
ishes, and that no great movements of benevolence ever 
originate in, or are carried on by, rural churches. 

As a matter of course, life cannot have much dignity 
or much that is characteristically human in it unless it 
be based upon active intellectuality, genuine sensibility, 
a development of the finer affections, and positive 
Christian virtue. When a man is a man, he never 
" tucks in grub." When a man lies down for rest and 
sleep he does not " go to roost." To a man, marriage 
is something more than " hitching on," and a dirty 
shirt is a good deal more of a "surprise" to a man's 
back than a clean one. There is no doubt about the 
fact that a life whose whole energies are expended in 
hard bodily labor is such a life as God never intended 
man should live. I do not wonder that men fly from 
this life and gather into the larger villages and cities, to 
get some employment which will leave them leisure for 
living. Life was intended to be so adjusted that the 
body should be the servant of the soul, and always sub- 
ordinate to the soul. It was never meant by the Cre- 
ator that the soul should always be subordinate to the 
body, or sacrificed to the body. 

I am perfectly aware that I am not revealing pleasant 
truths. We are very much in the habit of glorifying 



Rural Life. 159 

rural life, and praising the intelligence and virtue of 
rural populations ; and if they believe us, they cannot 
receive what I write upon this subject with pleasure. 
But the question which interests these people most is 
not whether my statements are pleasant, but whether 
they are true. Is the philosophy sound ? Are the facts 
as they are represented to be ? Does a severe and con- 
stant tax upon the muscular system repress mental de- 
velopment, and tend to make life hard and homely and 
unattractive ? Is this the kind of life • generally which 
the American farmer leads ? Is not the American 
farmer, generally, a man who has sacrificed a free and 
full mental development, and all his finer sensibilities 
and affections, and a generous and genial family and 
social life, and the dignities and tasteful proprieties of 
a well-appointed home, to the support of his muscles ? 
I am aware that there are instances of a better life than 
this among the farmers, and I should not have written 
this article if those instances had not taught me that 
this everlasting devotion to labor is unnecessary. 
There are farmers who prosper in their calling, and do 
not become stolid. There are farmers who are gentle- 
men — men of intelligence — whose homes are the abodes 
of refinement, whose watchword is improvement, and 
whose aim it is to elevate their calling. If there be a 
man on the earth whom I honestly honor it is a farmer 
who has broken away from this slavery to labor, and 
applied his mind to his soil. 



160 Lessons in Life. 

Mind must be the emancipator of the farmer. Science, 
intelligence, machinery — these must liberate the white 
bondman of the soil from his long slavery. When I 
look back and see what has been done for the farmer 
within my brief memory, I am full of hope for the fu- 
ture. The plough, under the hand of science, is become 
a new instrument. The horse now hoes the corn, digs 
the potatoes, mows the grass, rakes the hay, reaps the 
wheat, and threshes and winnows it ; and every day 
adds new machinery to the farmer's stock, to supersede 
the clumsy implements which once bound him to his 
hard and never-ending toil. When a farmer begins to 
use machinery and to study the processes of other men, 
and to apply his mind to farming so far as he can make 
it take the place of muscle, then he illuminates his call- 
ing with a new light, and lifts himself into the dignity 
of a man. If mind once gets the upper hand, it will 
serve itself and see that the body is properly cared for. 
Intelligent farming is dignified living. For a farmer 
who reads and thinks, and studies and applies, nature 
will open the storehouse of her secrets, and point the 
way to a life full of dignity and beauty, and grateful and 
improvable leisure. 



LESSON XIII. 

REPOSE. 

" Peace, greatness best becomes ; calm power doth guide 
With a far more imperious stateliness 
Than all the swords of violence can do, 
And easier gains those ends she tends unto." 

— DANIELo 

M When headstrong passion gets the reins of reason, 
The force of nature, like too strong a gale, 
For want of ballast oversets the vessel." 

— HlGGONS. 

" Give me that man 
That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him 
In my heart's core, ay, in my heart of hearts, 
As I do thee." 

— Shakspere. 

MRS. FLUTTER BUDGET was at church last Sun- 
day. She always is at church ; and she never for- 
gets her fan. I have known her for many years, and 
have never known her to be in church without a fan in 
her hand, and some article upon her person that rustled 
constantly. Her black silk dress is death to devotion 



1 62 Lessons in Life. 

over the space of twenty feet on all sides of her. She 
fixes the wires in the bonnets of her little girls, then 
takes their hats off entirely, then wipes their noses, then 
shakes her head at them, then makes them exchange 
seats with each other, then finds the text and the hymns 
for them, then fusses with the hassock, and then fans 
herself unremittingly until she can see something else to 
do. During all this time, and throughout all these ex- 
ercises, the one article of dress upon her fidgety person 
that has rustle in it, rustles. It chafes against the walls 
of silence as a caged bear chafes, with feverish restless- 
ness, against the walls of his cell ; and as if the annoy- 
ance of one sense were not sufficient, she seems to have 
adopted a bob-and-sinker style of trimming, for hat and 
dress, and hair and cloak, and every thing that goes to 
make up her externals. Little pendants are everywhere 
— little tassels, and little balls, and little tufts — at the 
end of little cords ; and these are all the time bobbing 
up and down, and trembling, and threatening to bob up 
and down, like — 

" The one red leaf, the last of its clan 
That dances as often as dance it can, 
Hanging so light, and hanging so high, 
On the topmost bough that looks up at the sky." 

Any person who sits near Mrs. Flutter Budget, or un- 
dertakes to look at her during divine service, loses all 
sense of repose, and all power of reflection. The most 



Repose. 163 

solemn exercises in which the mind engages cannot be 
carried on with a fly upon the nose, and any teasing of 
a single sense, whether of sight, or sound, or touch, is 
fatal to religious devotion. I presume that if the pastor 
wishes to find the most sterile portion of his field, he 
needs only to ascertain the names of those who occupy 
pews in the vicinity of this lively little lady. Her hus- 
band died two years ago, of sleeplessness, and a harass- 
ing system of nursing. 

The Flutter Budgets are a numerous family in Amer- 
ica. They are not all as restless as Madame, but the 
characteristics of the blood are manifest among them 
all. They never know repose ; and, what is worse than 
this, they dread if they do not despise it. They are 
immense workers — not that they do more work, and 
harder than their neighbors, but they make a great fuss 
about it, and are always at it. They rise early in the 
morning, and they sit up late at night ; and they do this 
from year's end to year's end, whether they really have 
any thing to do or not. They cannot sit still. They 
have an unhealthy impression that it is wrong for them 
not to be " doing something" all the time. Nothing in 
the world will make them so uncomfortable and so rest- 
less as leisure. Mrs. Flutter Budget could no more sit 
down without knitting- work, or a sock to darn, in her 
hands, than she could fly. As she has many times re- 
marked, she would die if she could not work. To her, 
and to all of her name and character, constant action 



1 64 Lessons in Life. 

seems to be a necessity. The craving of the smoker for 
his pipe or cigar, the incessant hankering of the opium- 
eater for his drug, the terrible thirst of the drunkard for 
his cups — all these are legitimate illustrations of the 
morbid desire of the Budgets for action or motion. The 
man who has the habit of using narcotics is not more 
restless and unhappy without his accustomed stimulus, 
than they are with nothing to do. In truth, I believe 
the desire for action may become just as morbid a pas- 
sion of the soul as that which most degrades and de- 
moralizes mankind. 

If I were called upon to define happiness, I could pos- 
sibly give no definition that would shut out the word re- 
pose. I do not mean by this that no person can be 
happy except in a state of repose, but I mean, rather, 
that no man can be happy to whom repose is impossible. 
The highest definition of happiness would probably 
designate the consciousness of healthy powers harmo- 
niously employed as among its prime elements ; but 
there can be no happiness that deserves its name with- 
out the consciousness of powers that are able to subside 
from harmonious action into painless repose. I know a 
little girl who plays out of doors at night as long as she 
can see, and who, when called into the house, takes up 
a book with restless greed for mental excitement, and 
then begs to be read to sleep after she has been required 
to put down her book and go to bed. She would be 
called a happy child by those who see her playing among 



Repose. 165 

her mates, yet it is easy to perceive that her happiness 
is limited to a single attitude and condition of body and 
mind. A happier child than she is one who can enjoy 
open-air play, and then quietly sit down at her mother's 
side and enjoy rest. That is an inharmonious and un- 
healthy state of mind which chafes with leisure ; and he 
is an unhappy man who cannot sit down for a moment 
without reaching for a newspaper, or looking about him 
for some quid for his morbid mind to chew upon. So I 
count no man truly happy who cannot contentedly sit 
still when circumstances release his powers from labor, 
and who does not reckon among the rewards of labor a 
peaceful repose. 

No ; Mrs. Flutter Budget is not a happy woman ; and, 
as I have intimated before, she seriously interferes with 
the happiness and the spiritual prosperity of those about 
her. When she can find nothing to do, then she worries. 
Those children of hers are worried nearly to death. If, 
in their play, they get any dirt upon their faces, they 
are sent immediately to make themselves clean. If 
they soil their clothes, they are shut up until reduced to 
a proper state of penitence. They are kept out of all 
draughts of air for fear of a cold ; and if they should 
take cold, why, they must take medicine of the most re- 
pulsive character as a penalty. If they cough out of the 
wrong corner of their mouths, she suspects them of 
croupy intentions ; and if they venture, at some un- 
guarded moment, on a cutaneous eruption, they are im- 



1 66 Lessons in Life. 

mediately charged with the measles, or accused of small- 
pox. If they quietly sit down for a moment of repose, 
she apprehends sickness, and stirs them about to shake 
it off. Even sleep is not sacred to her, for if she finds a 
flushed face among the harassed little slumberers, she 
wakes its owner to make affectionate inquiries. Her 
husband, as I have already stated, died two years ago. 
She worked upon his nervous system to such an extent 
that he was glad to be rid of the world, and of her. I 
think a man would die after awhile, with constantly look- 
ing at the motion of a saw-mill. The jar of a locomo- 
tive makes the toughest iron brittle at last ; and the 
wear and tear of a restless wife are beyond the strongest 
man's endurance. 

I have noticed that persons who have influence upon 
the minds of others, maintain constantly a degree of re- 
pose. I do not mean that those have most influence 
who use their powers sparingly, but that a certain de- 
gree of mental repose — or what may possibly be called 
imperturbableness — is necessary to influence. Mrs. 
Flutter Budget always talks in a hurry, and talks of a 
thousand things, and is easily excited. Her neighbor, 
carefully avoiding the causes which ruffle her, and pre- 
serving the poise of her faculties, insists on her point 
quietly, and carries it. The repose of equanimity is a 
charm which dissolves all opposition. The mind which 
shows itself open to influences from every quarter, and 
is swayed by them, is not its own master. The mind 



Repose. 167 

that never rests is invariably full of freaks and caprices. 
The mind that has no repose shows its dependence and 
its lack of self-control. There cannot go out of such a 
mind as this a strong, positive influence, any more than 
there can go forth from a candle a steady light, when it 
stands flickering and flaring in the wind, having all it 
can do to keep its flame from extinction. There must 
be that repose of mind which springs from conscious 
self-control and consciousness of the power of self-con- 
trol, under all ordinary circumstances, before a man 
can hope to have influence of a powerful character upon 
the minds about him. The driver of a coach-and-six, 
with all the ribbons in his hands, and a thorough knowl- 
edge of his horses and his road, sits upon his box in re- 
pose ; and that repose inspires me with confidence in 
him ; but if he should be constantly on the look-out for 
some trick, and constantly examining his harness, and 
constantly fussy and uneasy, I should lose my confidence 
in him, and wish I were in anybody's care but his. 

We do not need to be taught that a restless mind 
is not a reliable mind. There is an instinct which tells 
us this. There can be no reliableness of character 
without repose. If I should wish to take a ride, and 
two horses should be led before me to choose from, I 
would take the one that stands still, waiting for his bur- 
den and his command, rather than the one that occu- 
pies the road and his groom with his caracoling and 
curveting and other signs of restlessness. I should be 



1 68 Lessons in Life. 

measurably sure that one would bear me through my 
journey safely and speedily, and that the other would 
either throw me, or wear himself out, and so fail of 
giving me good service. St. Peter was a restless 
man — an impatient man. He was always the most im- 
pulsive, and the most ready to act, as the servant of 
the high priest had occasion to remember ; but he both 
lied and denied his Lord. It was John reposing upon 
the breast of Jesus, who most drew forth the Lord's 
affection. Martha, worrying about the house, cum- 
bered with much serving, chose a part inferior to that 
of Mary who reposed at the feet of Jesus. It is only 
in repose that the powers of the mind are marshalled 
for great enterprises and for progress. It is in repose, 
when passion is sleeping and reason is clear-eyed, that 
the military chieftain marks out his campaign and ar- 
ranges his forces. He is a poor commander who 
throws his troops into the field, and fights without or- 
der, or struggles for no definite end ; and there are 
multitudes of men who throw themselves into life with 
an immense splutter, and fight the fight of life with a 
great deal of noise, but who never make any progress, 
because they have never drawn upon repose for a plan. 

Repose is the cradle of power. It is the fashion to 
say that great men are men of great passions, as if 
their passions were the cause rather than the concomi- 
tant of their greatness. Great elephants have great 
legs, but the legs do not make the elephants great. 



Repose. 169 

Great legs, however, are required to move great ele- 
phants, and wherever we find great elephants, we find 
great legs. Small men sometimes have great passions, 
and these passions may so far overcome them that they 
shall be the weakest of the weak. The possession of 
great passions is often a disadvantage to weak men 
and strong men alike, because they furnish so many 
assailable points for outside forces. A fortress may be 
very strongly built, but if its doors are open, and 
scaling ladders are run permanently down from its 
walls for the accommodation of invading forces, its 
strength will be of very little practical advantage. 
Great passions are oftener the weak, than the strong 
points of great men. Now I do not believe it possible 
for a man to exercise a high degree of power upon the 
hearts and minds of others, and, at the same time, be 
under the influence of any variety of passion. A man 
cannnot be the shivering subject of an outside force, act- 
ing upon him through his passions, and at the same 
time a centre of effluent power. Action and passion 
are opposed to each other ; and when one has posses- 
sion of the soul the other is wanting. They involve 
two distinct attitudes of the mind, as truly as do 
thanksgiving and petition. 

The world often finds fault with great men be- 
cause they are cold ; but they could not be great men 
if they were not cold. A physician is often preferred 
by a family or patient because he is " so sympathizing/' 



170 Lessons in Life. 

as they call it. They forget that a physician is neces- 
sarily untrustworthy in the degree that he is sympa- 
thetic with his patients. A physician maybe thoroughly 
kind, and out of his kindness there may grow a gentle 
manner which seems to spring from sympathy ; but I 
say unhesitatingly that in the degree by which a phy- 
sician is sympathetic with his patients, is he unfitted 
for his work. A dentist who feels, in sympathy, the 
pain that he inflicts upon a child, is unfitted to perform 
his operation. The surgeon who sensitively sympa- 
thizes with a man whose diseased or crushed limb it 
has fallen to his lot to remove, has lost a portion of his 
power and skill, and has become a poorer surgeon for 
his sympathy. Physicians themselves show that they 
understand this when a case for medical or surgical 
treatment occurs in their own families. If their wives 
or their children are sick, they cannot control their 
sympathies ; and the moment they are aware of this, 
they lose all confidence in themselves. They cannot 
reduce the fracture of a child's limb, or prescribe for a 
wife lying dangerously ill, because their sympathies are 
so greatly excited that their judgment is good for noth- 
ing. In other words, they are in an attitude or condi- 
tion of passion — they are moved and wrought upon by 
outside forces, to such a degree that they cannot act. 

If an orator rise in his place, and show by the agita- 
tion of his nerves, his broken sentences, and his choked 
utterances, that emotion is uppermost in him, he has 



Repose, 171 

no more power upon his audience than a baby. We 
pity his weakness, or we sympathize with him ; but he 
cannot move us. He is a mastered man, and until he 
can choke down his passion he cannot master us. A 
man rises in an audience in a state of furious excite- 
ment, and fumes, and yells, and gesticulates, but he 
only moves us to pity, or disgust, or laughter. His 
passion utterly deprives him of power. We call Mr. 
Gough an actor, as he undoubtedly is ; and we pretend 
to be disgusted with him for simulating every night, for 
a hundred nights in succession, the emotions which 
move us. We forget that if Mr. Gough should really 
become the subject of the passions which he illustrates, 
he would lose his power upon us, and kill himself be- 
sides. He takes care never to be mastered, and takes 
care also that all the machinery which he uses shall 
contribute to his mastery of us. I do not deny that 
passion may be made tributary to the power of men. 
Oil is tributary to the power of machinery by lubricat- 
ing its points of friction ; and warmth, by bringing its 
members into more perfect adjustment ; but if the ma- 
chinery were made to wade in oil, or were heated red 
hot, oil and heat would be a damage to it. 

I repeat the proposition, then, that repose is the cra- 
dle of power. The man w T ho cannot hold his passions 
in repose — in perfect repose — can never employ the 
measure of his power. These " cold men," as the 
world calls them, are the men who move and control 



172 Lessons in Life. 

their race. But it is not necessary to cling to great men 
for the illustration of my subject. To say that a Chris- 
tian philanthropist should not be a sympathetic man 
Would be to say that he should not be a man at all ; but 
nothing is more certain than that if a man should sur- 
render himself to his sympathies it would kill him. In 
a world where sin and its bitter fruits abound as they 
do in this, where little children cry for bread, and whole 
races are sunk in barbarism, and villany preys upon 
virtue, and the innocent suffer in the place of the guilty, 
and sickness lays its hand upon multitudes, and pain 
holds its victims to a life-long bondage, and death leads 
throngs daily to the grave, and leaves other throngs wild 
with grief, a sensitively sympathetic man, surrendering 
himself to all the influences that address him, would 
lose all power to help the distressed, or even to speak a 
word of comfort. We are to apprehend the woes of 
others through our sympathies, and to hold those sym- 
pathies in such repose that all the power of our natures 
will be held ready for, and subject to, intelligent minis- 
try. The woman who faints at the sight of blood is not 
fit for a hospital. The man who grows pale at hearing 
a groan, will not do for a surgeon. If we mean to do 
any thing in this world for the good of men, we must 
first compel our sympathies and our passions into re- 
pose. 

That which is true of power in this matter is true of 
judgment. It is a widely bruited aphorism that " all 



Repose. 173 

history is a lie," and this aphorism had its birth in the 
fact that historians become, as it were, magnetized by 
the characters with which they deal. A man who writes 
the life of Napoleon finds himself either sympathizing 
with him, or roused into antipathy by him. In short, he 
becomes the subject of a passion, wrought upon him by 
the character which he contemplates and undertakes to 
paint ; and from the moment this passion takes pos- 
session of him, he becomes unfitted to write an impar- 
tial and reliable word about him. All positive historical 
characters have all possible historical portraits, simply 
because the writers are subjects of passion. It is be- 
cause no man can write of positive characters without 
being the subject of an influence from them, that no 
man can be an impartial historian, and that all history 
must necessarily be a lie. If ever a perfect history 
shall be written, it will be written by one whose pas- 
sions are under entire control, and kept in a condition 
of profound repose — who will look at a historical char- 
acter as he would upon an impaled beetle in an 
entomological collection. A man is no competent 
judge of a character, either in history or in life, with 
which he strongly sympathizes. I have known many a 
man utterly unfitted to read the proofs of the villany of 
one to whom he had surrendered his sympathies. A 
woman in love is a very poor judge of character. She 
can see nothing but excellence where others see nothing 
but shallowness and rottenness. 



174 Lessons in Life. 

Once more, there is no dignity without repose. A 
restless, uneasy man, can never be a dignified man. 
There can be no dignity about a man or a woman who 
fumes, and frets, and fusses, and is full of freaks and 
caprices. Dignity of manners is always associated with 
repose. Mrs. Flutter Budget always enters a drawing- 
room as if she were a loaded doll, tossed in by the 
usher, and goes dodging and tripping about to get her 
centre of gravity, without getting it. Her queenly 
neighbor comes in as the sun rises — calmly, sweetly, 
steadily, and all hearts bow to her dignified coming. 
What would an archbishop be worth for dignity, who 
should be continually scratching his ears, and brushing 
his nose, and crossing and re-crossing his legs, and 
drumming with his fingers ? Who would not deem the 
ermine degraded by a chief justice who should be con- 
stantly twitching about upon his bench ? It is a fact 
that has come under the observation of the least obser- 
vant, that the moment a man surrenders himself to his 
passions he loses his dignity. A fit of anger is as fatal 
to dignity as a dose of arsenic to life. A fit of mirth- 
fulness is hardly less fatal. So it is in repose, and par- 
ticularly in the repose of the passions, that we find the 
happiness, the influence, the power, and the dignity of 
our life. Let us cultivate repose. 



LESSON XIV. 

THE WAYS OF CHARITY. 

11 The Holy Supper is kept indeed, 
In whatso we share with another's need ; 
Not that which we give, but what we share, 
For the gift without the giver is bare : 
Who bestows himself, with his alms feeds three, — 
Himself, his hungering neighbor, and me. 1 ' 



-Lowell. 



' It may not be our lot to wield 
The sickle in the ripened field ; 
Nor ours to hear on summer eves, 
The reaper's song among the sheaves ; 
Yet, when our duty's task is wrought, 
In unison with God's great thought, 
The near and future blend in one, 
And whatsoe'er is willed is done." 



-Whittier. 



I HAVE come to entertain very serious doubts about 
my "orthodoxy" on the subject of doing good. If 
I know my own motives, I certainly have a desire to do 
good ; but this desire is yoke-fellow with the perverse 
wish to do it in my own way. I do not feel myself in- 



176 Lessons in Life. 

clined to accept the prescriptions of those who have 
taken out patents for various ingenious processes in this 
line of effort. My attention has just been attracted to 
this subject, by the perusal of a long story, which must 
be not far from the one hundred and ninety-ninth that I 
have read during the past twenty years, all tipped with 
the same general moral. A good-natured lady, in easy 
circumstances, and of benevolent impulses, is appealed 
to by a poor man in the kitchen. She feeds him, gives 
him clothes, sends him away rejoicing, and feels good 
over it. The man comes again and again, tells pitiful 
stories, excites her benevolence of course, and secures a 
reasonable amount of additional plunder. Months pass 
away ; and being out upon a walk one pleasant after- 
noon, and finding herself near the poor man's residence, 
the fair benefactress calls upon him. She finds the wife 
(who was reported dead) very comfortable indeed, and 
the destitute family of four children reduced to a single 
fat and saucy baby, and the poor liar himself smelling 
strongly of rum. Then come the denouement, and a 
grand tableau : lady very much grieved and astonished 
— wife, who has known nothing of her husband's tricks, 
exceedingly bewildered — fuddled husband, blind with 
rum and remorse, owns up to his meanness and dupli- 
city. He found (as he confessed) that he could work 
upon the lady's sympathies, got to lying and couldn't 
stop, and, finally, felt so badly over the whole opera- 
tion, that he took to drink to drown his conscience ! 



The Ways of Charity. 177 

Moral : Women should not help poor people without 
going to see them, and finding out whether they lie. 

Now that woman did exactly as I should have done, 
under the same circumstances. In the first place, I 
should never have had the heart to doubt a man who 
had an honest face, and was cold, hungry, and ragged. 
I should have regarded his condition as a claim upon 
my charity. In the second place, I should have had no 
time to call upon his family, and satisfy myself with re- 
gard to their circumstances ; and in the third place, I 
should have felt very delicate about putting direct ques- 
tions to them if I had. The same story tells incident- 
ally of one of these men who do good in the proper way. 
He visited a house which presented all the signs of pov- 
erty ; but the angel of mercy was too 'cute to be taken 
in ; so he walked up stairs. Every thing presenting 
there the same aspect of abject poverty that prevailed 
below, the angel of mercy looked around him, and dis- 
covered a ladder leading to the garret. The angel of 
mercy " smelt a rat," and mounted the ladder. In the 
garret he found half a cord of wood, and any quantity of 
goodies for the table. Another denouement and tab- 
leau. Moral : as before. If the story has taught me 
any thing, it is that it is my duty to question every beg- 
gar that comes to my door, visit his house, explore it 
from cellar to garret, and satisfy myself of the truth or 
falsehood of his representations. Otherwise, my charity 
goes for nothing, and I do my beggar an absolute un- 



178 Lessons in Life. 

kindness. In other words, while the law holds every 
man innocent until he is proved to be guilty, charity 
holds every man guilty until he is proved to be inno- 
cent. 

It has become the fashion in certain circles to decry 
that benevolence which sits at home in slippers, and 
gives its money without seeing where it goes ; but it is 
forgotten that the money dispensed in slippers was 
earned in boots, and that the man who has money to 
give, has usually so much business on hand that he can 
make no adequate personal examination of the cases 
which are referred to his charity. I can never forget 
Mr. Dickens' Cheeryble Brothers, who were so very 
much obliged to a friend for calling upon them, and tel- 
ling them of the circumstances of a poor family. It was 
taken as a great personal kindness when they were in- 
formed how and where they could relieve want and dis- 
tress. They had no genius for going about and looking 
up cases of charity, but their hearts leaped at the oppor- 
tunity to do good. They did their work in their count- 
ing-room, and had no time and no talent for visiting 
those whom they benefited ; but who would question 
either the genuineness or the judiciousness of their be- 
nevolence ? The applications for aid made at the doors 
of bur dwellings come oftener to the mistresses of those 
dwellings than to the masters ; and these mistresses, 
four times in five, are women with the care of children 
on their hands, or household duties which demand al- 



The Ways of Charity, 179 

most constant attention. If a beggar come to the door, 
they are grateful for the opportunity to afford relief; 
but they have no time to visit another quarter of the 
town, to learn whether their charities have been well be- 
stowed, nor do they withhold their charities through 
fear of being imposed upon. 

In my judgment, the character and circumstances 
of a man determine his office in the work of charitable 
relief. I know there are some persons who have a 
peculiar natural adaptation to the work of visiting the 
subjects of sickness and of need. Their presence and 
their sympathy are grateful to those to whom they de- 
light to minister. They are masters and mistresses of 
all those thrifty economies which enable them to man- 
age for the poor. They have genuine administrative 
talent in this particular department. They are cheer- 
ful and active, and sympathetic and ingenious ; and 
they can do more for a poor, discouraged family with 
ten dollars than others can do with fifty. I do not 
suppose that these people are one whit more benevo- 
lent than those whose purses are always open to the 
poor, and who at the same time would feel very awk- 
ward upon a visit of charity, and would make the fam- 
ily visited feel as awkward as themselves. The poor 
w r e have always with us ; and every man and woman 
who possesses means for their relief owes a duty to 
them which is to be discharged in the most efficient 
way. If I have money, and do not feel that I am the 



i8o Lessons in Life. 

proper person to look after the details of its dispensa- 
tion, I will put it into the hands of one more compe- 
tent to the business, and I will rationally conclude that 
I have done my duty. In the mean time, if a man come 
to my door, and ask for the supply of his immediate 
necessities, he shall not be turned empty away because 
I do not happen to have the means at hand for verify- 
ing his story. 

I know that there are multitudes of tender-hearted 
women — women of abounding benevolence and sensi- 
tive conscience — who are troubled upon this subject. 
They have a desire to do good, and to do it in the 
right way ; but, somehow, they find it impossible to 
do it according to the views of the story-writers. 
They are any thing but rugged in health, perhaps, or 
they have a dependent family of young children 
around them, or the care of their dwellings absorbs 
their time. They fail to find the opportunity to visit 
the poor, or they do not feel themselves adapted to 
the office ; and still they carry about with them the 
uncomfortable suspicion that they are meanly shrinking 
from duty. My thought upon this point is that my 
duties never conflict with one another, and that if I 
can do good in one way better than another, then that 
is my way to do good. I shall not permit the story- 
writers to prescribe for me, nor shall I allow them to 
make me uncomfortable. 

There is a class of men and women in all Protes- 



The Ways of Charity. 1S1 

tant communities who think it a very neat thing to do 
good at random. They sow broadcast of cheap seed, 
content to reap nothing at all, and pleasantly disap- 
pointed if they find here and there a stalk of corn to 
reward their sowing. They do not prepare their 
ground, they do not cultivate it at all, but they sow, 
hoping that in some open place a seed may fall and 
germinate. Some of these people regard this method 
of doing good as a kind of holy stratagem — a Christian 
trick — which takes the devil at a disadvantage. I once 
knew a kind old gentleman who did a business that 
brought him considerably into contact with rough and 
profane persons ; and as he wished to do something for 
them, he kept his pockets filled with little printed cards 
entitled "The Swearer's Prayer;" and whenever an 
oath came out, the utterer was immediately presented 
with this card with a little story on it, and a statement 
that " to swear is neither brave, polite, nor wise." I 
very well remember hearing the old gentleman say that, 
though he had given away hundreds of these cards, 
he had never learned that one of them had done 
any good. I do not wonder at it. It was a sneaking 
way of doing good, or of trying to. If the old man had 
remonstrated personally with these swearing fellows, 
and told them that their habit was both vulgar and 
wicked, does any one suppose that the result would 
have been so unsatisfactory ? He had not pluck enough 
to do this ; so he gave them a card, and they either 



182 Lessons in Life. 

threw it in his face or threw it away. But then, the 
cards didn't cost much ! 

I have been much interested in watching a car-load 
of passengers, while receiving each from the hands of a 
professional distributor a religious tract. All have re- 
ceived the gift politely, in deference to the motive 
which prompted, or was supposed to prompt, its be- 
stowal ; yet I have never failed to perceive that polite- 
ness was really taxed in the matter. Now let me be 
candid, and confess that I was never pleasantly im- 
pressed by being presented with a tract in a railroad 
car. This fact cannot be attributed to any lack of dis- 
position to contemplate religious subjects ; but there is 
something which tells me that it is improper and in- 
delicate for any man to come into a public vehicle, and 
thrust upon me and upon my fellow-passengers a set of 
motives and opinions on religion which may or may 
not accord with my own and theirs — just as it happens. 
I think the natural action of the mind is to brace itself 
against influences sought to be sprung upon it in this 
manner ; and I am yet to be convinced that this indis- 
criminate and wholesale distribution of religious tracts 
in railroad stations and public conveyances is not doing, 
and has not done, more harm than good. I know that 
multitudes of men — not vicious — are disgusted with it, 
and offended by it, and that there is something — call 
it what you may — in the emotions excited by the pre- 
sentation of a tract under such ill-chosen circumstances, 



The Ways of Charity. 183 

which counteracts any good influence it was intended 
to produce. A gentleman will receive a tract politely, 
and read it or not according to his whim ; but it will 
be very apt to disgust him with the style of Christian- 
ity which it represents. 

I am aware that the secretaries and the agents of the 
tract societies make very encouraging reports of the re- 
sults of their operations. I am always interested in 
these details, and do not discredit at all the statements 
which they make. Nay, I am convinced that in certain 
departments of their effort they are successful in doing 
much good. I believe that their noble army of colpor- 
teurs, going from lonely neighborhood to neighborhood, 
and carrying with them an unselfish, devoted life, and 
the living voice of prayer, exhortation, and counsel, win 
many souls to Christian virtue. I am willing to acknowl- 
edge, further, that here and there a tract, chance-sown, 
may fall into ground ready to receive it ; but I have a 
right to question whether the same outlay of effort and 
money, applied directly in other fields, would not bring 
very much larger returns. My point is that in all efforts 
to do good, in this way, appropriateness of time and 
place is always to be consulted. I once took my seat in 
a dentist's chair to have an operation performed upon 
my teeth. If I remember correctly, an ugly fang was 
to be removed — at any rate, pain was involved in the 
matter ; but no sooner was the dentist's arm around my 
head, and his instrument in my mouth, than the well- 



1 84 Lessons in Life. 

meaning and zealous operator began to question me 
upon the subject of personal religion. Now it seemed 
quite as bad to undertake to propagate Christianity at 
the point of a surgical instrument, as it would be to 
win proselytes by the sword ; and the utter incon- 
gruity of the two operations disgusted me. At any 
rate, / changed my dentist. I felt like the man who 
found upon his landlady's table an article of butter 
that was inconveniently encumbered with hair, and 
who informed her that he had no objection to hair, 
but would prefer to have it served . upon a separate 

-dish. 

A good many years ago, I read a Sunday-school book 
entitled, if I remember correctly, "Walks of Useful- 
ness." It represented a man going out into the street, 
and "pitching into" every person he met with, upon 
the subject of religion, or starting a conversation and 
immediately giving it a spiritual twist. I thought then 
that he was a remarkably ingenious man — a wonderful 
story-teller, to say the least of him. I am inclined to 
think now that he romanced a little. Every operation 
was so neatly done, and turned out so well, that I really 
suspect it was pure fiction. I have this to say, at any 
rate, that if he did and said what he professed to have 
done and said, under the circumstances which he de- 
scribed, he owed it to the politeness of those whom he 
addressed that he was not dismissed with a decided re- 
buff, and told to go about his business, " A word fitly 



The Ways of Charity. 185 

spoken, how good it is ! " Ah yes ! how very good it is ! 
Christian zeal is no excuse for bad taste, nor is Christian 
effort exempt from the laws of fitness and propriety 
which attach to human effort of other aims in other 
fields. If I wish to reach a man's mind upon any im- 
portant subject, and circumstances do not favor me, I 
wait for circumstances to change, or I pave my Way to 
his mind by a series of carefully-adjusted efforts. Ab- 
rupt transitions of thought and feeling, and violent in- 
terruptions of the currents of mental life and action, are 
never favorable to reflection. If I wish to cheer a man 
who is bowed to the earth in grief for the loss of a com- 
panion, I will not break in upon his mourning with a 
lively tune upon a fiddle. If I wish to attract him to a 
religious life, I will not interrupt the flow of his inno- 
cently social hours by some terrible threat or warning. 
In truth, I know of nothing that calls for more care, or 
nicer discrimination, or choicer address, than a per- 
sonal attempt to move an irreligious mind in a religious 
direction. The word of gold should always have a set- 
ting of silver. 

There seems to be a prevalent disposition in the re- 
ligious world to do good by indirection and stratagem. 
If a man can reach one mind by scattering ten thousand 
tracts, the result is more grateful than it would be if 
that mind were reached by direct personal effort without 
any tracts ; and it makes a larger and more interesting 
show in the reports. This disposition is manifest in the 



1 86 Lessons in Life. 

matter of charitable fairs. The women of a religious 
society will make up a batch of little-or-nothings, freeze 
a few cans of ice cream, hire a hall, and advertise a sale. 
We all go, and buy things that we do not want, with a 
good-natured and gallant disregard of prices, and the 
footings of receipts are published in the newspapers. 
The charitable women feel pleasantly about it, and think 
that they have done a great deal of good at a small cost, 
without remembering that all the money they have 
made has cost somebody the amount of the declared fig- 
ures. It seems to be a great deal pleasanter to get pos- 
session of the money in this way, than it would be to 
obtain it by a general subscription. They forget that 
all they have done is to obtain a subscription by a grace- 
ful and attractive stratagem, and that the motives which 
they have pocketed with the money would not stand the 
test of a scrupulous analysis. The main point seems to 
be to get the money, and do the good with the least 
possible sense of sacrifice ; as a man goes to a charitable 
ball, and pays two dollars for the privilege of dancing 
all night, in order to give a shilling of profits to the 
widow and fatherless without feeling the burden of the 
charity. 

Of all the means of doing good, I know of none so 
repulsive as that which is purely professional. I think 
we do not have so much of this in these days as our 
fathers had. Our pastors are more thoroughly our 
companions and friends than they used to be. They 



The Ways of Charity. 187 

do not assume to be our dictators and censors as they 
did in the earlier days of Puritanism. The idea of the 
regular parochial visit is essentially changed. But I 
know clergymen, even now, who visit the house of 
mourning professionally, and give their professional 
consolation in a professional way, and depart feeling 
that they have faithfully performed their professional 
duty. I know clergymen who go round from house to 
house with their professional inquiries, and do up any 
quantity of professional work in a day. The family 
come in (those who do not run away), and take seats 
around the room, and answer questions, and listen to a 
prayer, and then they bid their pastor a good afternoon - 
with a sense of relief, and go about their business again, 
while he pushes on to his next parishioner, and repeats 
the professional task. It is all a dry and unfruitful 
formality on the part of the families visited, and a pro- 
fessionally-discharged duty on the part of the pastor, 
and a pitifully-ridiculous caricature of the visit of a 
religious teacher to his disciples every way. What 
shall be said of an interview of which the pastor's part 
consisted of these words : "Very late spring — Hem! " 
(looking out of the window) — "who is building that 
barn ? — potatoes seem to be getting along very well ; " 
(turning to a member of the family) — et Jane, how 
do you enjoy your mind?" A spiritual frame that 
could stand such a transition as that, without taking 
a fatal cold, must be based upon a very sound con- 



1 88 Lessons in Life. 

stitution, and toughened by frequent repetition of the 
process. 

I suppose there will always be obtuse men in the 
pastoral office — men who know no way of getting into a 
sensitive soul except by knocking in the door and walk- 
ing in with their boots on ; but all such men are out of 
their place. The souls of an average people — tied to 
the tasks of life, burdened by care, oppressed by rou- 
tine, and depressed in many instances by bodily weak- 
ness — need sympathy more than counsel, and encour- 
agement and inspiration more than a solemn, profes- 
sional catechetical probing of their religious state. But 
I think, as I have already said, that the world is im- 
proving in this matter. Our pastors are more social, 
more facile, more appreciative of the fact that, in all 
their personal intercourse with their people, they must 
win love and give sympathy if they would do good in 
the line of their profession. 

So much in the vein of criticism ; and if I am asked 
what guide a man shall have in the matter of doing 
good in tbe world, I shall answer : a loving, honest, and 
brave heart, and a mind that judges for itself. The 
heart that loves its fellow-men will move its possessor 
to do good ; and the mind that thinks and judges for it- 
self will decide in what direction its efforts ought to be 
made. If a man be moved to do good, he will do it, and 
his heart will lead him in the right direction. Under a 
mistaken sense of duty, inculcated by incompetent 



The Ways of Charity. 189 

counsellors, men find themselves in fields of benevolent 
action to which they are very poorly adapted ; and the 
world is full of these blunders ; but an honestly-loving 
heart and an ordinarily clear brain, that nobody has 
been allowed to meddle with and muddle, will tell a 
man where he belongs and what be ought to do. If a 
man have a gift for ministering to the sick, let him do it. 
If he have a gift for dealing personally with the poor, 
let him do that. If he have a gift for making money, 
and none for properly applying his charities, let him 
hand his money to those who are competent to dispense 
it. I do not believe that many loving hearts, coupled 
with unsophisticated judgments, are engaged in indis- 
criminate and random efforts to act for religious ends 
upon the minds they meet with. I believe that with all 
such hearts and judgments there is connected a sense 
of that which is fit and proper in time, place, and cir- 
cumstance, so that wherever they strike they leave 
their mark. I believe that such hearts and judgments 
will scorn to do that by indirection which they can do 
better directly, and that if it be fit and proper for them 
to offer reproof to a man, they will do it by the brave 
word of mouth, and not sneak up to him and put a card 
or a tract into his hand. I believe that men with such 
hearts and judgments would prefer making a subscrip- 
tion directly to a charitable object, to making one indi- 
rectly by paying double price for articles they do not 
want. And last, I think that pastors, with such hearts 



190 Lessons in Life. 

and judgments, are not at all in danger of becoming 
coldly professional in their noble duties. A life in any 
sphere that is the expression and outflow of an honest, 
earnest, loving heart, taking counsel only of God and it- 
self, will be certain to be a life of beneficence in the 
best possible direction. 



LESSON XV. 

MEN OF ONE IDEA. 

"Cultivate the physical exclusively, and you have an athlete or a savage ; 
the moral only, and you have an enthusiast or a maniac ; the intellectual only, 
and you have a diseased oddity — it may be a monster. It is only by wisely 
training all three together that the complete man can be formed." 

— Samuel Smiles. 

WHEN the heats of summer have dried up the 
streams, and cataracts only trickle and drip, 
and the dams of brooks and rivers cease to pour the 
arching crystal from their lips, I have always loved to 
explore the forsaken water-courses. An imprisoned 
fish, a shell with rainbow lining, a curiously-worn rock, 
a strangely-tinted and grotesquely-fashioned stone — ■ 
these are always objects of interest. Then to sit down 
upon a ledge that has been planed off by ice, and 
smoothed by the tenuous passage of an ocean's palpi- 
tating volume, and watch the shrunken stream slipping 
around its feet, and hear the gurgle of the faintly-going 
water, and grow so drowsy with the song that breaks 
at last into surprising articulations, and talks and 



192 Lessons in Life. 

laughs, and shouts and sings — ah ! this, indeed, is en- 
chantment ! There are few men, I suppose, so fortu- 
nate as to have enjoyed a country breeding, who do not 
recall scenes like this, — who do not remember a half- 
, holiday, at least, spent in the bed of a summer stream, 
and at the feet of scanty cataracts, making fierce at- 
tacks on water snakes, watching lizards, lying among 
the stones of an old raceway, creeping up, hat in hand, 
to a gauze-winged devil's needle that shivered on a 
sunny jDoint of rock, and looked as if it might be the 
ghost of a humming-bird, starting to mark the sudden 
flight and hear the chattering cry of the king-fisher as 
he darted through the shadows and disappeared, and 
noting the slim-legged wagtail, racing backward and 
forward upon the border of the stream. 

Among the objects of interest very often, if not al- 
ways, to be found at the feet of dams and cataracts, 
are what people call "pot-holes." They are round 
holes worn in the solid rock by a single stone, kept in 
motion by the water. Some of them are very large 
and others are small. When the stream becomes dry, 
there they are, smooth as if turned out by machinery, 
and the hard, rough pebbles at the bottom by which 
the curious work was done. Every year, as the dry 
season comes along, we find that the holes have grown 
larger and the pebbles smaller, and that no freshet has 
been found powerful enough to dislodge the pebbles 
and release the rock from their attrition. Now if a 



Men of One Idea. 193 

man will turn from the contemplation of one of these 
pot-holes, and the means by which it is made, and seek 
for that result and that process in the world of mind 
which most resemble them, I am sure that he will find 
them in a man of one idea. In truth, these scenes that 
I have been painting were all recalled to me by looking 
upon one of these men, studying his character, and 
watching the effect of the single idea by which he was 
actuated. " There, " said I, involuntary, "is a moral 
pot-hole with a pebble in it ; and the hole grows larger 
and the pebble smaller every year." 

I suppose it is useless to undertake to reform men 
of one idea. The real trouble is that the pebble is in 
them ; and whole freshets of truth are poured upon 
them, only with the effect to make it more lively in its 
grinding, and more certain in its process of wearing out 
itself and them. The little man who, when ordered by 
his physician to take a quart of medicine, informed him 
with a deprecatory whimper that he did not hold v more 
than a pint, illustrates the' capacity of many of those who 
are subjects of a single idea. They can hold' only one, 
and it would be useless to prescribe a larger number. 
In a country like ours, in which every thing is new and 
everybody is free, there are multitudes of self-consti- 
tuted doctors, each of whom has a nostrum for curing 
all physical and moral disorders and diseases, — a patent 
process by which humanity may achieve its proudest 
progress and its everlasting happiness. The country is 
9 



194 Lessons in Life. 

full of hobby-riders, booted and spurred, who imagine 
they are leading a grand race to a golden goal, forget- 
ful of the truth that their steeds are tethered to a 
single idea, around which they are revolving only to 
tread down the grass and wind themselves up, where 
they may stand at last amid the world's ridicule, and 
starve to death. 

Man cannot live by bread alone, but by every word 
that proceeds out of the mouth of God, whether 
spoken through nature or revelation. There is no one 
idea in all God's universe so great and so nutritious 
that it can furnish food for an immortal soul. Variety 
of nutriment is absolutely essential, even to physical 
health. There are so many elements that enter into 
the structure of the human body, and such variety of 
stimuli requisite for the play of its vital forces, that it 
is necessary to lay under tribute a wide range of na- 
ture ; and fruits and roots and grain, beasts of the field, 
fowls of the air, and fish of the sea, juices and spices 
and flavors, all bring their contributions to the perfec- 
tion of the human animal, and the harmony of its func- 
tions. The sailor, kept too long upon his hard biscuit 
and salt junk, degenerates into scurvy. The occupant 
of the Irish hovel who lives upon his favorite root, and 
sees neither bread nor meat, grows up with weak eyes, 
an ugly face, and a stunted body. It is precisely thus 
with a man who occupies and feeds his mind with a 
single idea. He grows mean and small and diseased 



Men of One Idea. 195 

with the diet. The soul bears relation to such a wealth 
of truth, such a multitude of interests cluster about it, 
it has such variety of elements — as illustrated by its 
illimitable range of action and passion — it touches and 
receives impressions from all other souls at such an in- 
finite variety of points, that it is simply absurd to sup- 
pose that one idea can feed it, even for a day. 

A mind that surrenders itself to a single idea becomes 
essentially insane. I know a man who has dwelt so 
long upon the subject of a vegetable diet that it has 
finally taken possession of him. It is now of such im- 
portance in his eyes that every other subject is thrown 
out of its legitimate relations to him. It is the constant 
theme of his thought — the study of his life. He ques- 
tions the properties and quantities of every mouthful 
that passes his lips, and watches its effects upon himself. 
He reads upon this subject every thing he can lay his 
hands on. He talks upon it with every man he meets. 
He has ransacked the whole Bible for support to his 
theories ; and the man really believes that the eternal 
salvation of the human race hinges upon a change of 
diet. It has become a standard by which to decide the 
validity of all other truth. If he did not believe that 
the Bible was on his side of the question, he would dis- 
card the Bible. Experiments or opinions that make 
against his faith are either contemptuously rejected or 
ingeniously explained away. Now this man's mind is 
not only reduced to the size of his idea, and assimilated 



196 Lessons in Life, 

to its character, but it has lost its soundness. His rea- 
son is disordered. His judgment is perverted — de- 
praved. He sees things in unjust and illegitimate rela- 
tions. The subject that absorbs him has grown out of 
proper proportions, and all other subjects have shrunk 
away from it. I know another man — a man of fine 
powers — who is just as much absorbed by the subject of 
ventilation ; and though both of these men are regarded 
by the community as of sound mind, I think they are 
demonstrably insane. 

If we rise into larger fields, we shall find more no- 
table demonstrations of the starving effect of the enter- 
tainment of a single idea. Scattered throughout the 
country we shall find men who have devoted themselves 
to the cause of temperance, or abstinence from intoxi- 
cating liquors. Here is a grand, a humane, a most 
worthy and important cause ; yet temperance as an idea 
is not enough to furnish food for a human soul. Some 
of these men have only room in them for one idea, and, 
so far as they are concerned, it might as well be tem- 
perance as any thing, though it is bad for the cause ; 
but the majority of them were, at starting, men of gen- 
erous instincts, a quick sense of that which is pure and 
true, and a genuine love of mankind. They dwelt upon 
their idea — they lived upon it for a few years — and then 
they " showed their keeping." If I should wish to find 
a narrow-minded, uncharitable, bigoted soul, in the 
smallest possible space of time, I would look among 



Men of One Idea. 197 

those who have made temperance the specialty of their 
lives — not because temperance is bad, but because one 
idea is bad ; and the men afflicted by this particular 
idea are numerous and notorious. They have no faith 
in any man who does not believe exactly as they do. 
They accuse every man of unworthy motives who op- 
poses them. They permit no liberty of individual 
judgment and no range of opinion ; and when they get 
a chance, they drive legislation into the most absurd 
and harmful extremes. Men of one idea are always ex- 
tremists, and extremists are always nuisances. I might 
truthfully add that an extremist is never a man of sound 
mind. 

The whole tribe of professional agitators and mis- 
called reformers are men of one idea. That these men 
do good, sometimes directly and frequently indirectly, 
I do not deny ; and it is equally evident that they do a 
great deal of harm, the worst of which, perhaps, falls 
upon themselves. Like the charge of a cannon, they 
do damage to an enemy's fortifications, but they burn 
up the powder there is in them, and lose the ball. Like 
blind old Samson, they may prostrate the pillars of a 
great wrong, but they crush themselves and the Philis- 
tines together. The greatest and truest reformer that 
ever lived was Jesus Christ ; but ah ! the difference be- 
tween his broad aims, universal sympathies, and over- 
flowing love, and the malignant spirit that moves those 
who angrily beat themselves to death against an insti- 



198 Lessons in Life, 

tuted wrong ! As an illustration, look at those who 
were the prominent agitators of the slavery question in 
this country for twenty years. Were they men of 
charity ? Were they Christian men ? Was not in- 
vective the chosen and accustomed language of their 
lips ? Did they not follow those against whom they op- 
posed themselves, whether for good cause or otherwise, 
into their graves with a fiendish lust of cruelty, and did 
they not delight to trample upon great names and 
sacred memories ? Were they men whom we loved ? 
Did we feel attracted to their society ? Teachers of 
toleration, were they not the most intolerant of all men 
living ? Denouncers of bigotry, were they not the most 
fiercely bigoted of any men we knew ? Preachers of 
love and good will to men, did they not use more forci- 
bly than any other class the power of words to wound 
and poison human sensibilities ? 

It is not the quality of the idea which a man enter- 
tains that kills him. Freedom for every creature that 
bears God's image — the breaking of the rod of the op- 
pressor and letting the oppressed go free — this is a good 
idea. It is so great, so broad, so full, so flowing, that a 
world of men might gather around it for a time as they 
do around Niagara, and grow divine in its majestic 
music and the vision of the wreath of light which heaven 
holds above it. If a man undertake to live upon a sin- 
gle idea, it really makes very little difference to him 
whether that idea be a good or a bad one. A man may 



Men of One Idea. 199 

as well get scurvy on beans as beef. I suppose a diet 
of potatoes would be quite as likely to support life com- 
fortably as a diet of peaches. It is because the human 
soul cannot live upon one thing alone, but demands 
participation in every expression of the life of God, that 
it will dwarf and starve upon even the grandest and 
most divine idea. 

The agitators and reformers are very ready to see the 
dwarfing effect of a single idea or a single range of ideas 
upon the Christian ministry, and a large number of 
Christian men. I admit the accuracy of their observa- 
tions in this matter, and, admitting this, I can certainly 
ask the question whether they hope to escape deprecia- 
tion when the Christian idea — the divinest of all — is in- 
sufficient of itself to make a man, and fill him, and give 
him all desirable health and wealth and growth. As I 
have touched upon this point, I may say that it is com- 
ing to be understood that a man or a minister, in order 
to be a Christian, must be something else — that Chris- 
tianity received into nature and life is only one of the 
elements of manhood — and that a man may become 
starved and mean and bigoted and essentially insane by 
feeding exclusively upon religion. What means the vis- 
ion of these sapless, sad, and sanctimonious Christians 
— these poor, thin, stingy lives — but that all ideas save 
the religious one have been shut out from them ? Is it 
not notorious that a minister who has fed exclusively 
upon religion is a man without power upon the hearts 



200 Lessons in Life. 

and minds of men ? Is it not true that he has most effi- 
ciency in pulpit ministration who has the largest knowl- 
edge of and sympathy with men, the broadest culture, 
and the widest acquaintance with all' the ideas that enter 
as food and motive into human life ? Is it not true that 
in the life-long, absorbing anxiety and carefulness of a 
multitude of souls to secure their salvation, those souls 
are constantly becoming less valuable, and thus — to use 
the language of the market — less worth saving ? 

I cannot fail, however unwilling, to see much that is 
dry and stiff and unlovely in the style of Christianity 
around me. It has no attraction for me. I do not like 
the people who illustrate it; and the reason is, not that 
they have got too much of Christianity, but that they 
have not got enough of any thing else. Flour is good, 
but flour is not bread. If I am to eat flour, I must eat 
it as bread ; and either milk or water must be used to 
make it bread. If a little milk is used, the bread will 
be dry and heavy and hard. If a good deal is used, the 
flour will be transformed into a soft and plastic mass, 
which will rise in the heat, and come to my lips a sweet 
and fragrant morsel. Christianity is good, but it wants 
mixing with humanity before it will have a practical 
value. If only a little humanity be mixed with it, the 
product will be dry and tasteless ; but if it be combined 
with the real milk of humanity, and enough of it, the 
result will be a loaf fit for the tongues of angels. No : 
the divinest idea that has yet been apprehended by the 



■Men of One Idea. 201 

human mind is not enough for the human mind. That 
which God made to be fed by various food cannot be fed 
with success or safety by a single element. We cannot 
build a house of dry bricks. It takes lime and sand and 
water in their proper proportions to hold the bricks to- 
gether. 

This selection of a single idea from the great world of 
ideas to which the mind is vitally related, and making 
it food and drink, and motive and pivotal point of ac- 
tion, and supreme object of devotion, is mental and 
moral suicide. It makes that a despotic king which 
should be a tributary subject. It enslaves the soul to a 
base partisanship. It is right to make money, and it is 
right to be rich when wealth is won legitimately ; but 
when money becomes the supreme object of a man's 
life, the soul starves as rapidly as the coffers are filled. 
It is right to be a temperance man and an anti-slavery 
man, and an advocate of any special Christian reform ; 
but the effect of adopting any one of these reforms as 
the supreme object of a man's pursuit, never fails to be- 
little him. One of the most pitiable objects the world 
contains is a man of generous natural impulses grown 
sour, impatient, bitter, abusive, uncharitable, and un- 
gracious, by devotion to one idea, and the failure to im- 
press it upon the world with the strength by which it 
possesses himself. Many of these fondly hug the delu- 
sion to themselves that they are martyrs, when, in fact, 
they are only suicides. Many of these look forward to 

9* 



202 Lessons in Life, 

the day when posterity will canonize them, and lift them 
to the glory of those who were not received by their age 
because they were in advance of their age. So they re- 
gard with contempt the pigmy world, wrap the mantles 
, of their mortified pride about them, and lie down in a 
delusive dream of immortality. 

Whether the effect of devotion to a single idea be dis- 
astrous or otherwise to the devotees, nothing in all his- 
tory is better proved — nothing in all philosophy is more 
clearly demonstrable — than the fact that it is a damage 
to the idea. If I wished to disgust a community with 
any special idea, I would set a man talking about it and 
advocating it who would talk of nothing else. If I 
wished to ruin a cause utterly, I would submit it to the 
advocacy of one who would thrust it into every man's 
face, who would make every other cause subordinate to 
it, who would refuse to see any objections to it, who 
would accuse all opponents of unworthy motives, and 
who would thus exhibit his absolute slavery to it. Men 
have an instinct which tells them that such people as 
these are not trustworthy — that their sentiments and 
opinions are as valueless as those of children. If they 
talk with a pleasant spirit, we good-naturedly tolerate 
them ; if they rant and scold and denounce, we hiss 
them if we think it worth while, or we applaud them as 
Ave would the feats of a dancing bear. If they say devil- 
ish things in a heavenly sort of way, and clothe their 
black malignities in silken phrases, we hear them with a 



Men of One Idea. 203 

certain kind of pleasure, and take our revenge in despis- 
ing them, and feeling malicious toward the cause they 
advocate. It would kill us to drink Cologne-water, but 
the perfume titillates the sense, and so we sprinkle it 
upon our handkerchiefs. 

No great cause can be forwarded by the advocacy of 
men who have no character, and no man can devote 
himself to an idea without the loss of character. When 
a man comes forward to promulgate an idea, we inquire 
into his credentials. How large a man is this? How 
broad are his sympathies ? How wide is his knowl- 
edge ? What relation does he bear to the great world 
of ideas among which this is only one, and very likely 
a comparatively unimportant one ? Is he so weak as 
to be possessed by this idea, or does he possess it, and 
entertain a rational comprehension of its relations to 
himself and the community ? I know that multitudes 
of good men have been so disgusted with the one-sided, 
partisan character of the advocates of special ideas and 
special reforms, that they would have no association 
with them. We have only to learn that a man can see 
nothing but his pet idea, and is really in its possession, 
to lose all confidence in his judgment. When in a 
court of justice a man testifies upon a point that touches 
his personal interests or feelings or relations, we say 
that his testimony is not valuable — not reliable. It de- 
cides nothing for us. We say that the evidence does 
not come from the proper source. We do not expect 



204 Lessons in Life. 

candor from him, for we perceive that his interests are 
too deeply involved to allow sound judgment and ut- 
terly truthful expression. It is precisely thus with all 
professional agitators and reformers — all devotees of 
single ideas. They are personally so intimately con- 
nected with their idea — have been so enslaved by their 
idea — are so interested in its prosperity — that they are 
not competent to testify with relation to it. 



LESSON XVI. 

SHYIiVG PEOPLE. 

" It is jealousy's peculiar nature 
To swell small things to great ; nay, out of naught 
To conjure much : and then to lose its reason 
Amid the hideous phantoms it has formed." 



— Young. 



" I will not shut me from my kind ; 
And, lest I stiffen into stone, 
I will not eat my heart alone, 
Nor feed with sighs a passing wind." 

— Tennyson. 

*' Fear is the virtue of slaves ; but the heart that loveth is willing." 

— Longfellow. 

READER, did you ever drive a horse that had the 
mean habit of shying? If so, then you will re- 
member how constantly he was on the lookout for ob- 
jects that would frighten him. He would never wait for 
the bugbear to show its head ; but he conjured it up at 
every point. Every hair upon his sides seemed trans- 
formed into an eye ; and there was not a colored stone, 
nor a stick of wood, nor a bit of paper, nor a small dog, 



206 Lessons in Life. 

nor a shadow across the road, nor any thing that intro- 
duced variety into his passage, that did not seem to be 
endowed with some marvellous power of repulsion. 
First he dodged to the right, after having foreseen the 
evil from afar, and wrought himself up to a fearful pitch 
of sidelong excitement ; and then he dodged to the left, 
having been surprised into passing a cat without alarm ; 
and, so, dodging to the right and left, he has half wor- 
ried the life out of you. Being constantly on guard, and 
always watching for objects of alarm, and suspicious of 
dangers in disguise, he has had no difficulty in maintain- 
ing a condition of permanent fright, which has worked 
itself off in spasms of shying. To a man who has driven 
a horse up to a locomotive without danger or fear, such 
an animal as this seems to be unworthy of the name of a 
horse ; and to one who has read of the spirit and fear- 
lessness of the war-horse, a shying horse seems to be the 
most contemptible of his race. 

Well, I have met shying men, and I meet them upon 
the sidewalk almost every day. I have watched them 
from afar, and known by their eyes and a certain pre- 
paratory nervousness of body, that they would "shy'' 
at me. I have been conscious, however, that there was 
nothing in me to shy at. I have had no pistols in my 
pocket, and no Bowie knife under my coat collar. I 
have been innocent of any intention to leap upon and 
throttle them. I have had no purpose to trip their heels 
by a sudden " flank movement," and not even the de- 



Shying People, 207 

sire to knock their hats off. Indeed, I have felt toward 
them a degree of friendliness and kindness which I 
would have been very glad to express, had they afforded 
me an opportunity ; but they were shying men by na- 
ture, or by habit, or by whim. So far as I have been 
able to ascertain the causes of their infirmity, it is the 
result of a suspicion that they are not quite as good as 
other people, and a belief that other people understand 
the fact. Far be it from me to deny that their suspi- 
cions touching themselves are well grounded ; but that 
is no reason why other people should not speak to them 
politely. There is a class of men and women who are 
always looking out for, and expecting, slights from those 
whom they suppose to be their superiors. They get a 
suspicion that a certain man feels above them ; so when 
they pass him in the street, they shy at him — go around 
him — will not give him an opportunity to be polite to 
them. They are martyrs, as they suppose, to unjust 
social distinctions. They act as if they were painfully 
uncertain as to whether they are men and women or 
spaniels. 

Now by the side of the person who carries an un- 
suspicious, self-respectful, open face, into any presence, 
such people as these seem unworthy of the race to 
which they belong. It is not the bold, brassy, self-as- 
serting man who is their superior, because his sort of 
offensive forwardness originates in even a worse state of 
mind and heart than the habit of shying. When a man 



208 Lessons in Life. 

shies, he only suspects that he is inferior to his sur- 
roundings. When a man offensively puts himself for- 
ward, and talks loudly among his betters, he knows he 
is mean, and knows that he is not where he belongs. 
You will find a professional gambler to be a loud- 
mouthed man, who not only does not shy at his betters, 
but who seeks all convenient opportunities for associ- 
ating with them, and claiming an equality with them. 
The shying man is one who has not much respect for 
himself, who is envious and jealous of others, and who, 
however strongly he may protest against the charge, 
has the most abject respect for social position and 
arbitrary social distinctions. If he see a man who 
either assumes or seems to be above him, it is a reason 
in his mind why that man should not notice him. The 
result is that decent men soon take him at his own valu- 
ation, and notice him no more than they would a dog ; 
and they serve him right. 

I know of no more thankless task than the attempt to 
assure shying people that we love them, respect them, 
and are glad to continue their acquaintance. The in- 
stances in which old school-mates meet in the journey 
of life with a sickening coolness, in consequence of 
changed circumstances and relations, are of every- 
day occurrence. Two persons who separated at the 
school-house door in dawning manhood, with equal 
prospects, come together later in life. One has risen 
in the world, has won hosts of friends, has been put 



Shying People. 209 

forward by them into public office, perhaps, and has ac- 
quired a competence. The other has remained upon 
the old homestead, has had a hard life, and has won 
neither distinction nor wealth. The fortunate man 
grasps the hand of the other with all the cordiality of 
his nature and his honest friendship ; but he meets a 
reserve which may be almost sullen. He strives to call 
up the scenes gone by — the old school-sports — the 
school companions, boys and girls — the old neighbor- 
hood friendships — but they will not come. All attempts 
to touch the heart of his former schoolmate, and bring 
him into sympathy through the power of association, 
fail. The poor fool suspects his friend of patronizing 
him, and he will not be patronized. Feeling that his 
friend has got along in the world better than himself, 
he cannot understand why he should not be regarded as 
an inferior, and treated as such. Thenceforward, the 
fortunate man must seek the society of the unfortunate 
man, or he will never have it. The former may give 
practical recognition of entire equality, to the best of 
his ability, but it will avail nothing, for the latter will 
not "toady " to his friend, nor be " patronized" by him. 
At last the fortunate man becomes tired of the effort to 
make his unfortunate friend understand him, and he 
kicks him and his memory aside, and calls it a friend- 
ship closed forever, without fault upon his part. 

I have often wished that it could be understood by 
these people who are so uncertain in regard to their 



210 Lessons in Life. 

position, and so suspicious that everybody has the dis- 
position to slight them, and so much afraid of being 
patronized, and so averse to the thought of " toadying" 
that they stand stiffly aloof from the society which they 
envy, and so much offended with people for feeling 
above them, that their sentiments and feelings are suffi- 
cient reason for society to hold them in contempt. 
There is a lack of self-respect — a meanness — in their 
position, that is really a sufficient apology for treating 
them with entire social neglect. They habitually mis- 
construe those among whom they move ; they are ex- 
acting of attention to the last degree ; they are always 
uncomfortable, and they are ready to take offence at 
the smallest fancied provocation. I have now in my 
mind an artisan whom I had occasion to get acquainted 
with a dozen years ago ; and I have compelled him to 
speak to me every time I have met him since. I really 
do not know what he had done to make him regard 
himself so contemptuously, but I think he has never to 
this day fully believed that I have the slightest respect 
for him. He has tried to dodge me. He has shied re- 
peatedly, but I have compelled him to make me a 
good-natured bow, till he begins to like it, I think — till 
he expects it, at least. 

Many children are bred to the idea that certain fami- 
lies are socially above them. They are taught from their 
cradles to consider themselves in a certain sense infe- 
rior. How few American children are taught that there 



Shying People, 2 1 1 

is no degradation in poverty, and that a humble employ- 
ment and an obscure position are entirely consistent 
with self-respect, under all circumstances, in whatever 
society. I do not mean to say that they have not heard 
their parents remark that they were " as good as any- 
body." There is enough of this talk ; and it is precisely 
this which teaches children that they are born to what 
their parents consider dishonor — inferiority to their, 
neighbors. It is impossible for children who have been 
bred in this way ever to outgrow, entirely, their feeling 
of inferiority. The people who are entirely self-respect- 
ful never have any thing to say about their position in 
the presence of their children ; and it is a cruel thing to 
teach a child, not that there is a grade of society which 
is actually above him, but that the persons who occupy 
that grade look down upon him — and, in the constitu- 
tion of society, have the right to look down upon him — 
with contempt. To see an honest lad in humble cloth- 
ing actually awed by finding himself in the presence of 
a well-dressed child of affluence, is very pitiful ; and 
there are thousands of these poor boys who, having won 
wealth and distinction, never in their consciousness lose 
their early estate sufficiently to feel at home with those 
among whom the advance of fortune has brought them. 

A thoroughly self-respectful person will command re- 
spect anywhere. A man who carries into the world an 
unsuspecting, unassuming face, who is polite to every- 
body, minds his own business, and does not show by his 



212 Lessons in Life. 

demeanor that he bears about with him a sense of deg- 
radation and inferiority, and who gives evidence that he 
considers himself a man, and expects the treatment due 
to a man, will secure politeness and respect from every 
true gentleman and gentlewoman in the world. The 
man who shies, and suspects, and envies, and is full of 
petty jealousies, and is always afraid that he shall not 
get all that is due to him in the way of polite attention, 
and manifests a feeling of great uncertainty and anxiety 
concerning his own social position, is sure to be shunned 
at last, and he will well deserve his fate. No real gentle- 
man, and no true gentlewoman, ever has feelings like 
these. It is only those who are neither, and who do not 
deserve the position of either, that are troubled in this 
way. I give it as a deliberate judgment that there is far 
less of contempt for the poor and obscure among what 
are denominated the higher classes of society than there 
is of envy and hatred of the rich and renowned among 
the poor and humble ; and- that the principal bar to a 
more cordial and gentle intercourse between the two 
classes, is the lack of self-respect which pervades the 
latter, and the mean, degrading humility which they 
manifest in all their relations with those whom they con- 
sider above their level. 

American society is mixed — heterogeneous — more so, 
probably, than that of any other country. There is no 
such thing as well-defined classification. There is no 
nobility, no gentry, no aristocracy, no peasantry. The 



Shying People, 213 

owners of palaces were bred in log cabins ; men of 
learning are the children of boors ; and one can never 
tell by a man's position and relations in society into 
what style of life he was born. The boy goes into the 
city from his father's farm, carrying only a hardy frame, 
a good heart, and a suit of homespun, and twenty years 
frequently suffice to establish him as a man of fortune, 
and marry him to a woman of fashion. There is no bar 
to progress in any direction for the ambitious man, ex- 
cept lack of brains and tact. Society erects no barriers 
of caste which define the bounds of his liberty. Notwith- 
standing this, there is always, in every place, a body of 
people who assume to be " the best society." The claim 
to the title is rarely well substantiated, and is based on 
different ideas in different places. We shall find in 
some places, that society crystallizes around the idea of 
wealth; in others, around the idea of literary culture; 
in others, around certain religious views, so that, as it 
may happen, the " best society" is constituted of the 
Presbyterian, or Episcopalian, or Unitarian, or other sec- 
tarian element. In other places, an old family name is 
the central power, and, in others still, a certain style of 
family life attracts sympathetic materials which assume 
the position of " the best society." 

Whatever may be the central idea of the self- consti- 
tuted elite, they are always the objects of the envy of a 
large number of minds. Silly people " lie awake nights " 
to get into the best society. Those who are securely in, 



214 Lessons in Life. 

of course sleep soundly in their safety and their self- 
complacency ; and those who are too low to think of 
rising to it, and those who do not care for it, go through 
the six to ten hours of their slumber " without landing," 
as the North River boatmen say. But a middle class, 
who range along the ragged edges of society, know no 
rest. They sail along in an uncertain way, like the 
moon on the border of a cloud — sometimes in and some- 
times out — feeling naked and very much exposed among 
the stars, and rather foggy and confused in the cloud, as 
if, after all, they did not belong there. It is in this class 
that we meet with shying men and shying women. It is 
in this class that we find heart-burnings, and jealousies, 
and envyings, and sensitive misunderstandings. It is a 
sort of purgatory through which the rising man and wo- 
man pass to reach the paradise of their hope, and from 
which an unhappy soul is never lifted. These people 
do not stop to inquire whether they have any sympathy, 
or any thing in common with the society which they seek 
— whether they would be lost, or whether they would be 
at home in it. They do not even seem to suspect that 
much of that which is called the best society, is the last 
society that a sensible, good man should seek. 

Let us suppose that wealth is the central idea of the 
best society, and then let the aspirant to this society 
ask himself whether he has wealth. Has he a fine 
house and an elegant turnout ? Does he dress expen- 
sively, and is he able to give costly entertainments ? 



Shying People. 215 

Is he prepared to unite, on a plane of perfect equality, 
with those who give the law to this society ? If so, 
it will not be necessary for him to seek it, for the so- 
ciety will seek him, — that is, if he be an agreeable 
man. If he be very rich indeed, why, it is not neces- 
sary that he be agreeable at all. But suppose literary 
culture be the central force of this society — has the aspi- 
rant any fitness for, or sympathy with it ? Can he meet 
those who form this society as an equal, or mingle in it 
as a thoroughly sympathetic element ? Would he feel 
happy and at home in a literary atmosphere ? These 
questions indicate a legitimate direction of inquiry, 
touching every case of this kind. Multitudes of 
those who are dissatisfied with their position have 
nothing in common with the society to which they as- 
pire, and would be so much out of place there that 
they would be very unhappy. My idea, then, is, that 
so far as society is concerned, men and women natu- 
rally find their own place. A true gentleman and a 
genuine gentlewoman, wherever they may appear, and 
whoever they may be, are as readily known as any ob- 
jects ; and really good society recognizes its affinities 
for them at once. They do not have to seek for a 
place, for they fall into their place as naturally as a 
soldier falls into, and joins step with, his company. 

Now what can be meaner than the jealousy which 
sits in the circle where it is really most at home, and 
regards with its green and greedy eyes, a circle for 



216 Lessons in Life. 

which it has no affinities, except the affinities^ which 
envy has for that which it considers above itself? It 
is a meanness, too, which has two sides to it. It is no- 
torious that the black overseer upon the plantation was 
severer with his companions in slavery than a white 
man would have been, and it'is just as notorious that the 
man who has abjectly bowed before the distinction of 
wealth and social standing, always becomes insufferably 
pretentious when fortune or favor lifts him to the place 
of his desire. The man who shies those he esteems his 
betters is always a proud man at heart, or, if the adjec- 
tive be allowable, an aristocratic man ; and he is very 
careful to preserve his position of comparative respect- 
ability with relation to those below him. He will al- 
ways be found to be pretentious in his own circle, and 
supercilious with relation to those in lower life. Is it 
not true that half of the neighborhood quarrels that 
take place, and three-quarters of the slander, and all 
the gossip that are indulged in, result from these petty 
jealousies between circles, and the sensitiveness that is 
felt regarding social standing on the part of those who 
are not quite so high in the world as they would like 
to be. 

I can only notice briefly the shying that is done by 
the other side of society. In effect, I have done this 
already, perhaps, but it is proper to say directly that 
there are many moving in what is called the best so- 
ciety, who, with a suspicion that they do not belong 



Shying People. 217 

there, or a feeling that their position is not secure 
there, shy a humble man when they meet him, and 
dodge all vulgar associations. 1 suppose that no true 
gentleman is ever afraid of being mistaken for any 
thing else. A gentleman knows that there is nothing 
which is more unlike the character of a gentleman than 
the supercilious treatment of the humble, and the fear 
of losing caste by treating every class with kindness 
and politeness. I recognize no difference between- the 
two shying classes — the men who shy their fellow-men 
because they are high, and the men who shy their fel- 
low-men because they are low. Both are mean, both 
are unmanly, and both are deficient in the self-respect 
necessary to the constitution of a gentleman. There 
are no better friends in the world — no men who under- 
stand each other better — none who meet and converse 
more freely at their ease — none who have more re- 
spect for each other — than a genuine gentleman and a 
self-respectful humble man, who knows his place in the 
social scale, and is abundantly satisfied with it. There 
is no need of any intercourse between men, of what- 
ever difference of social standing, less dignified and 
gentle than this. 
10 



LESSON XVII. 

FAITH IN HUMANITY. 

" Say, what is honor ? 'Tis the finest sense 
Of justice which the human mind can frame, 
Intent each lurking frailty to disclaim, 
And guard the way of life from all offence, 
Suffered or done." — Wordsworth. 

"A child of God had rather ten thousand times suffer for Christ, than 
that Christ should suffer for Him." — John Mason. 

"For mankind are one in spirit, and an instinct bears along 
Round the earth's electric circle the swift flash of right or wrong ; 
Whether conscious or unconscious, yet humanity's vast frame 
Through its ocean-sounded fibres feels the gush of joy or shame ; — 
In the gain or loss of one race, all the rest have equal claim." 

— Lowell. 

ONE of the most reliable supports of that which is 
best in man is faith in other men. In truth, I be- 
lieve that no man can lose his faith in men and women, 
and remain as good a man as he was before the loss. 
Better evidence that a man is rotten in some portion of 
his character, or rotten clean through his character, 



Faith in Humanity. 219 

cannot be found than real, or pretended, loss of faith 
in his fellows. When a young man tells me that he has 
no doubt that certain persons, publicly reputed to be 
good, take sly drinks in their own closets, and de- 
scend into grosser indulgences when in strange places ; 
that the best men are hypocrites ; that there is no such 
thing as womanly virtue ; and that appetite and selfish- 
ness outweigh everywhere principle and manly honor, 
I know that, ninety-nine times in one hundred, he finds 
a reason in his own heart and life for his declarations. 
I know that he simply wishes to maintain a certain de- 
gree of self-respect, and that he finds no way to do this 
save by bringing everybody around him down to his 
own level. A man who has lost his virtue, and is still 
suffering under the blows of conscience, is very loth to 
believe that there is any virtue in the world. 

Yet there are circumstances in which faith in human- 
ity is lost without fault, though never without damage, 
on the part of the loser ; and very sad cases they are. 
I remember an abused, broken-hearted, and forsaken 
wife, who declared to me her belief that her husband was 
no worse than any other men (pleasant for me, wasn't 
it ?) — that there was not a man in the world who could 
withstand temptation, or who would have done differ- 
ently from her husband under the same circumstances. 
Why was this ? She had loved this man with all the 
devotion of which her warm woman's heart was capa- 
ble ; she had respected him as an embodiment of all 



220 Lessons in Life. 

manly qualities ; he had impersonated her beau ideal. 
If he — the peerless, the prince — could fall, and forsake, 
and forget, who would not ? He who had once been to 
her the noblest and best man in the world, could never 
become worse than the rest of the world. Now one of 
the foulest wrongs and one of the deepest injuries which 
this man had inflicted upon his wife was the destruction 
of her faith in men. He had not only blotted out her 
faith in him, but he had blotted out her faith in human- 
ity, and, of course, her faith in herself. What safe- 
guards of her own virtue fell when her faith in man was 
destroyed, she did not know ; but in her innermost con- 
sciousness, she must have grown careless of herself — 
possibly desperate. 

Hardly a month passes by in which we do not hear 
of some defalcation, some lapse from integrity, by a 
man who, through many years of business life, had 
maintained an untarnished reputation. I have half a 
dozen such cases in my memory now, and I do not 
know what to make of them. When I see a character 
standing to-day above all reproach, compacted through 
many years of manly, honest, Christian living, over- 
thrown to-morrow, and trodden in the mire, I am 
shocked. If such men fall, where are we to look for 
those who will not ? If such men, with worthy natures, 
and long practice of virtue, and myriad motives for the 
maintenance of an unspotted character, yield to temp- 
tation, and are suddenly overthrown, what reason have I 



Faith in Humanity. 221 

to suppose that my partner, my brother, myself, shall 
escape ? I am scared, and grow cautious, and sus- 
picious. 

Did you ever think that there is one individual, at 
least, in the world — that possibly there are ten indi- 
viduals, possibly one hundred, possibly more — who be- 
lieve that you are, as a man or a woman, just as nearly 
right as you can be ? Did you ever think that there are 
people who pin their faith to you, who believe in you, 
who trust you, and that among those people your own 
reputation is identified with the reputation of the race ? 
I care not how humble a man may be, there are always 
those who trust in him. Think of the trust which a 
family of children repose in their parents, and of the 
faith which the parents have in their children. Very 
humble the parents may be — very untrustworthy as 
moral guides, and judges, and authorities ; but if they 
were angels, with the light of heaven in their eyes, they 
would not be more confided in and relied upon by the 
little ones who cling to their knees. So, at all ages, we 
garner our faith in individuals ; and so, all men and 
women, however humble and unworthy they may be, 
become the objects and recipients of this faith. 

Now, if there be ten men and women who have gar- 
nered their faith in me — who believe in me, through 
and through — and whose faith in all humanity would 
be sadly shocked, if I should fall, and prove to them 
that their confidence had been entirely misplaced, then 



222 Lessons in Life. 

I hold for those ten persons the reputation of the hu- 
man race in my hands. If you, my reader, have at- 
tracted to yourself the honest faith of a thousand hearts, 
then you hold in your hands, for those hearts, the good 
name of humanity. Upon the shoulders of each man 
in the community, there rests a great responsibility. 
He has not only his own reputation to take care of, but 
he has the reputation of his race. If all mankind are 
to be thought more meanly of by mankind, to be less 
trusted, and less loved, because I have been untrue, 
though my untruth touch but one person directly, I 
commit a great crime against my race. Yet this crime 
is nothing by the side of that which I commit against 
those who have trusted in me. It injures them to think 
meanly of mankind — to have their confidence shaken in 
humanity — much more than it injures humanity to be 
thought meanly of. A man may as well stab me as to 
destroy my faith in my kind, for the comfort and hap- 
piness of my life depend upon the maintenance of this 
faith. 

There are not a few men and women in this world 
who are thoroughly conscious that not only their imme- 
diate personal friends think better of them than they 
deserve, but that the community — all who know them — 
accord to them a higher excellence of heart and life than 
they really possess. There are some who seem fitted by 
nature to attract the affection, and secure the respect of 
all those with whom they come into contact, in a very 



Faith in Humanity. 223 

remarkable degree ; and, yet, these persons may be 
painfully conscious, all the while, that they are not so 
good as they are thought to be. They are not hypo- 
crites ; they have never intended to deceive anybody ; 
they have never pretended to be what they are not ; but 
people believe in them without limit. A person who 
has this power of attracting, the confidence of men has 
forced upon him an immense responsibility. To say 
nothing of his duty to himself and his God, he owes it to 
his race to be, or to become, as good as he seems. It is 
essentially a crime against humanity for one who draws 
the hearts of men to him easily, to do any thing which 
will tend to depreciate their estimate of his character. 
A man should carry a life thus extravagantly over-esti- 
mated, as he would carry a cup of wine — careful that 
none be spilled, and careful that no impurity fall into it. 
It is a great blessing to be loved and respected — nay to 
be admired for admirable qualities — and when men are 
generous enough to pay in advance for excellence, they 
should never be cheated in the amount and quality of 
the article. 

There is such a thing as honor among men ; there are 
such things as modesty, truth, and integrity. They are 
qualities that belong to humanity, irrespective of relig- 
ion and of Christian culture. There are men so true to 
their higher natures that I would trust them with my 
name, my gold, my children, my all, without a doubt. 
I am proud to claim kinship with such men. They con- 



224 Lessons in Life. 

fer dignity upon the race of which I am a member. I 
am glad to take their hands in mine. Suppose one of 
these — for such things have been — should deceive me, 
and I should discover that my name had been abused, 
my gold wasted or stolen, and my children ruined by 
this man : could I ever trust again ? Should I not be 
humiliated ? Should I not feel disgraced ? Should I 
ever be willing to let another man into my heart ? 
Should I not doubt whether there are, indeed, such 
things as honor, and modesty, and truth, and integrity, 
in the world ; and thus doubting, would not the strong- 
est defences of my own virtue be thrown down ? The 
truth is, that no man can do an unmanly thing without 
inflicting an injury on the whole human race. No man 
can say " I will do as I choose, and it will be nobody's 
business." Every man's sin is everybody's business, 
literally. Every sin shakes men's confidence in men, 
and becomes, whatever its origin, the enemy of man- 
kind ; and all mankind have a right to make common 
cause in its extermination. 

I once heard a careless fellow say that he " professed 
nothing and lived up to it ; n but " professing nothing" 
does not exonerate a man at all, so far as relates to the 
personal maintenance of honor, purity, and truth. The 
man who would excuse a lapse from virtue, or any ob- 
liquity of conduct, on the ground that he did not pro- 
fess any thing, simply announces to me the execrable 
proposition that every man has a kind or degree of 



Faith in Humanity. 225 

right to be a rascal until he pledges himself to be some- 
thing better. There are altogether too many men in 
the world who are keeping themselves easy with the 
thought that if they are not very good, they never pre- 
tended or professed to be — as if this failure publicly to 
pronounce themselves on the side of the highest moral- 
ity, were a sufficient apology for minor delinquencies ! 
It seems to be a poultice of poppies to some* sensitively 
inflamed consciences, that, whatever they may have 
done, they have never broken promises voluntarily 
made, to do right — as if there were a release from the 
obligation to do right, in failing to make the promise ! 
If it will help a man to do right, publicly to profess to 
do right, and to do good to other men by placing his in- 
fluence on the right side,' then the first duty a man owes 
to his race, is to make this declaration. But I will not 
linger here, because my words have led me to the dis- 
cussion of the obligations of those who have made a 
profession of Christianity, and taken upon themselves 
the vows of Christian church -membership. 

When a man joins a Christian church, he becomes 
related to that church in the same way that nature 
makes him related to humanity. The reputation of 
the church is placed in his keeping. He cannot do an 
unchristian thing without injury to the church, or with- 
out depreciating, in the eyes of the world, every other 
member. Think what a blow is inflicted upon the 
church of Jesus Christ by such scandalous immoralities 
10* 



226 Lessons in Life. 

as some of its most prominent members have been 
guilty of — by forgeries, and adulteries, and drunken- 
ness ! These cases are not common, but when they 
occur, they are blows under which the church reels. 
The outside world looks on, and scoffs : " Aha ! That's 
your Christianity, is it ? " 

I declare that I do not know of a position that 
more strongly appeals to a man's personal honor than 
that of membership in a Christian church. Even if a 
man in such a position should say within himself : 
" This costs more than it comes to. I love my vices 
more than I love the Master whose name I profess. 
Either openly or secretly, I will give rein to my appe- 
tites and passions " — he should be arrested by the con- 
sideration that he proposes to do that which will wound 
the feelings, and degrade the position, and injure the 
influence, of thousands of the best men and women in 
the world ; that he proposes to inflict an irreparable 
injury upon a cause which has never injured him, and 
whose office it is to save him, and all mankind. Per- 
haps he is so weak, and temptation is so strong, that 
he feels, in the stress of his trial, that he can afford to 
perjure his own soul ; but if he does, he has no right 
to wound others. Better fight the devil until the ani- 
mal within us bleeds at every vein — until it dies, if 
that must be — than " offend one of these little ones." 
A man who will join a church, and then lead an un- 
christian life, not only demonstrates before the world 



Faith in Humanity. 227 

his hypocrisy, but he voluntarily undertakes to prove 
that he has no personal honor. An honorable man will 
sacrifice himself always before he will voluntarily in- 
flict injury upon a cause he has pledged himself to sus- 
tain, and upon men and women whose good name is in 
his hands. When a member of a church has become 
so hardened in a course of bad living, that no pang 
comes to him when he thinks of the injury he is inflict- 
ing upon the Christian church, he is bad enough for a 
prison. I would not trust him the length of my arm. 

We have had, within the last ten years, too many 
notable instances of falls from virtue among the clergy ; 
and every fall has been like an avalanche. They come 
from a point so near to heaven, and fall so far, that 
mountain-sides are scarred and whole communities 
whelmed by the calamity. It takes, often, many years 
for the villages that lie at their feet to smile again. 
All Christendom feels the shock, and mourns with 
downcast eyes the consequences. I freely grant that, 
as a class, the American clergy, of all denominations, 
are the purest and best men whom I know ; but I can- 
not resist the conviction that there are many of them 
who forget what the responsibility is that rests upon 
them. It was the remark of an aged clergyman, re- 
tired from pulpit duties, that if he were a layman he 
should watch with more anxiety and carefulness than 
laymen do the relations that exist between pastors and 
the women of their flock. I do not understand this as 



228 Lessons in Life. 

a statement that there is any general looseness of con- 
duct among the clergy at all ; but as one which covers 
a kind of impropriety for which there is no name and 
no punishment. There are women whose affection for 
their husbands is uprooted through their intercourse 
with their pastors. There shall never be an improper 
word spoken ; there shall never be a deed committed 
that would bring a blush to the most sensitive cheek ; 
yet a susceptible woman in the society of a minister of 
strong and magnetic sympathies, may become as passive 
as a babe. Led toward him by her religious nature, 
attracted and held* by his intellectual power and the 
grace of his language, yielding to him her confidence, 
it is not strange that, before she is aware, she is a cap- 
tive without a captor, a victim without an enemy, a 
wreck without a destroyer. 

Now I know that there is not a pastor of a strong 
and graceful and sympathetic nature who reads these 
words without understanding what I mean — who does 
not know that there are women in his congregation 
who are, either consciously or unconsciously, the slaves 
of his will. I have no doubt that there are some such 
pastors who will read this essay with a flush of guilt 
upon their faces. They have never meant these women 
any ill — they would not harm them for the world — but 
they are conscious of a selfish and most unchristianly 
pleasure in these conquests of female natures — these 
parlor triumphs, God forgive them ! Perhaps they go 



Faith in Humanity. 229 

further, and, by the lingering, fervent pressure of a 
hand, or the glance of an eye, or the utterance of some 
bit of gallantry or flattery, send into a woman's heart 
an unwomanly and an unchristian thought. Perhaps 
they take special delight in the society of some half a 
dozen female members of their flock, and find them- 
selves dressing for them — betraying to them their 
weaknesses — opening, in various ways, avenues by 
which the quick eyes and instincts of these women can 
see directly into them. The number of pastors is not 
small, I think, who are not aware that there is one 
woman, or that there are some women, who know 
more of what is in them, to their disadvantage, than 
any man, — that before certain lenient — possibly sad and 
forgiving eyes — they stand as men who indulge in es- 
sentially unchristian vanities of purpose and life. 

Of all woman-killers in this world, I know of none 
so disgusting as one whose chosen profession it is to 
preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ. A clerical fop, a 
ministerial gallant, a man who preaches the love of 
God on Sunday, and lays snares for an innocent heart 
on Monday afternoon, is a disgrace to Christianity, and 
a sad burden to the Christian cause. Does such a man 
think that he can add a little zest to a leisure hour and 
a humdrum life, by toying with a tender friendship, 
and giving lease and latitude to his desire for personal 
conquest, and yet that no one shall know it ? Ah, the 
fallacy ! I know of eminent clergymen — earnest work- 



230 Lessons in Life. 

ers — who, by yielding to this desire once, have been 
shorn of their power for good forever, so far as those 
are concerned who really know them and their weak- 
ness. There are ministers in America before whom 
strong men tremble, and great congregations bow them- 
selves, who could be laughed to scorn and smothered 
in a cloud of blushes, by some girl to whom, in a weak 
moment, they betrayed the vain heart that beats within 
them. Ah ! ye men of the black coat and the white 
neck-cloth, — toying with women, under whatever dis- 
guise ; indulging in the vanity of personal power, how- 
ever ingeniously you mask it, is not for you. You can 
never do it without an injury to the religion which you 
profess to preach. If you find that you are too weak 
to resist these temptations — and they are great to such 
as you — then you should leave the desk forever. You, 
at least, are bound in personal honor to quit the pub- 
lic advocacy of a cause which your private life dis- 
honors. 

Easy to preach, you say ? Easier to preach than 
practise ? Nobody knows it better than I — unless it be 
you. I do not expect perfection in this world, of any- 
body ; — I do not expect impossibilities of anybody. But 
there are certain duties which men owe to humanity and 
their race, and which members of Christian churches 
and teachers of Christian churches owe to Christianity 
and to their brotherhood, which are possible to be per- 
formed, and which I insist upon. I do not appeal to 



FaitJi in Humanity. 231 

the highest motives — at least I do not appeal to religious 
motives. I appeal to personal honor. I say that every 
man, high or low, is bound in honor so to conduct him- 
self as not to disgrace humanity — as not to shake the 
confidence of men in human honor. I say that every 
man who belongs to a Christian church — no matter what 
his internal life may be — is bound in honor so to carry 
himself before men and women, that the Christian name 
receive no damage and the Christian cause no prejudice 
in their eyes. Every man carries the burden of his race 
and his brotherhood ; and if he be a man, he will neither 
ignore it nor try to shake it off. 



LESSON XVIIL 

SORE SPOTS AND SENSITIVE SPOTS. 

" Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased ; 
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow ; 
Raze out the written troubles of the brain ? " 

— Shakspeare. 

"I have gnashed 
My teeth in darkness till returning morn, 
Then cursed myself till sunset ; I have prayed 
For madness as a blessing; 'tis denied me." — Byron. 

" Alessandra. Methinks thou hast a singular way of showing 
Thy happiness ! — what ails thee, cousin of mine ? 
Why didst thou sigh so deeply? 

" Castiglione. Did I sigh ? 
I was not conscious of it. It is a fashion, 
A silly — most silly fashion I have 
When I am very happy. Did I sigh?" — Poe. 

THERE is a hill opposite to my window, up which, 
during all the long and weary day, horses are 
drawing heavy loads. The majority of them crawl pa- 
tiently along, with their heads down and with reeking 
flanks and shoulders, pausing occasionally as the water- 



Sore Spots and Sensitive Spots. 233 

bars brace the wheels, and impatient only with the flies 
that vex their ears, and the insufficiency of their short 
and stumpy tails to protect their quivering sides. Some 
of these animals are not so patient, but are nervous and 
spasmodic and unhappy. I have noticed one among 
them particularly, that has a very bad time every morn- 
ing with his first load. He is what the teamsters call 
" balky," though evidently an excellent horse. Much 
coaxing and not a little whipping seem necessary to get 
him started ; and then he plunges into his work as if he 
were determined to tear his harness and his load all in 
pieces. I notice that there are certain unusual fixtures 
about his collar, and learn that the poor animal has a 
galled shoulder, so raw and inflamed that all his first ef- 
forts in the morning are attended with pain, and that he 
only works well after the flesh has become benumbed 
by pressure. I ask his driver why he does not turn the 
creature into the pasture, and let the ulcer heal, and am 
told that he has been treated thus repeatedly, but that it 
always returns when labor is resumed. There is a livery 
stable that I visit frequently ; while I wait to be served, 
I notice what the grooms are doing. I see that when 
the curry-comb or brush touches a certain spot upon the 
horse's skin there is a cringe, and usually a kick and a 
squeal, — possibly a harmless nip at the groom's shoulder. 
I learn, too, that there is a certain place upon the back 
of every horse that the grooms are not permitted to 
bathe with cold water. 



234 Lessons in Life. 

These sore spots and tender spots and sensitive spots 
on horses have very faithful counterparts in the minds 
and characters of men. I do not know that I ever met 
a man who had not on him, somewhere, a sore spot, or 
f a tender spot, or a sensitive spot — a spot that would 
either gall under the collar of labor, or bring on hys- 
terics if harshly rubbed, or communicate a damaging 
shock to the nervous system when suddenly cooled. 
Very few men arrive at thirty-five years of age without 
getting galled, and very few entirely recover from the 
abrasion while they live. The spot never thoroughly 
heals, and the old collar only needs to be put on, even 
after the longest period of rest, to develop the ulcer in 
the same old place. I heard a young clergyman preach 
recently, and I instantly learned that he had a sore spot 
under his collar. He was a young man of fine powers, 
bold intellect, a strong love of freedom, and a will de- 
termined to do honor to his convictions. He had formed 
his own opinion upon certain points of doctrine, and 
had insisted upon it in the presence of his elders. The 
consequence was that he had been bitterly opposed, and 
was with great difficulty settled over his parish. The 
screws had been put tightly down upon him, and he had 
felt, in the very depth of his sensitive soul, that the lib- 
erty wherewith Christ had made him free had been tam- 
pered with. So he could neither pray nor preach with- 
out showing that he had a sore spot on him. He did 
not betray it by refusing to draw at all ; but he drew 



Sore Spots and Sensitive Spots. 235 

violently, as if he had been hitched to the leg of an ob- 
tuse Doctor of Divinity, and intended to give all the 
other Doctors of Divinity notice to get out of the way. 
Now that sore spot on that young man's shoulder is sure 
to color all his efforts from this time henceforth, until 
he puts on another kind of collar. The same old sting 
will be in all his preaching — a tinge of personal feeling 
— that the masses of those who hear him preach will 
not understand, and that he, at last, will become uncon- 
scious of. Ministers have more sore places under their 
harnesses than any class of men I know of. 

A minister who has adopted unpopular views, and, in 
his advocacy of them, has rubbed against the fixed opin- 
ions or prejudices of the people to which he is called to 
preach, is very sure to get sore ; and he will either 
wince with the friction or oppose himself to it with vio- 
lence. His soreness will always be calling attention to 
that which caused it, so that if his wound was procured 
in the advocacy of some infernal doctrine like " infant 
damnation," why, infant damnation will seem to become 
a very precious doctrine to him, and he will always be 
talking about it, and enforcing it". If he has preached 
against slavery, or intemperance, or any other public 
wrong or popular vice, and been fiercely and persist- 
ently opposed by any portion of his charge, he will be- 
tray the sore under his collar on all occasions, and very 
possibly become so fractious and violent that his flock 
will be obliged to turn him out to pasture. A minister 



236 Lessons in Life. 

who gets sore under the friction of any particular collar 
seems to feel that it is necessary for him to wear that 
particular collar all the time ; and he fails to remember 
that the reason why he has so much feeling with this 
collar on, is that it has made him sore. Not unfre- 
quently he becomes so sensitive and so nervous that he 
kicks out of the traces, and runs away with, and smashes 
up, the vehicle to which he is attached. 

No small degree of the sourness and bitterness and 
violence of the advocates of special reforms comes from 
wearing too long the collar of the public apathy, or the 
public contempt. The men are very few, who, with the 
consciousness of being actuated by a good motive, can 
work against opposition a long time, without getting 
sore, and without betraying their soreness, either by 
stubbornness or violence. Touch them anywhere but 
upon the galled spot, and they will be as calm as clocks, 
and as good-natured as kittens ; touch them there, and 
we are sure to get a kick and a squeal, and a nip at the 
shoulder. Heartless practical jokers understand where 
" the raw" is, and know exactly what to say to provoke 
a galled man to make a fool of himself. 

The conscience is very liable to become sore with 
friction. One entire section of the American nation be- 
came sore, even to madness, with working in the collar 
of the world's condemnation. The slave States of Amer- 
ica were very comfortable with slavery so long as they 
could hold it with self-respect, and so long as the world 



Sore Spots and Sensitive Spots. 237 

regarded them rather with sympathy and pity than with 
condemnation. As the popular opinion against slavery 
strengthened and became intensified, both in this and 
other countries, they became sore and sensitive. First, 
they tucked a constitutional rag between the collar and 
the skin ; and as that did not seem to relieve them, they 
lined it with leaves from human philosophy ; and phil- 
osophy soon wearing out, they tore their Bibles into 
pieces for materials with which to soften the cushion, 
and set the Christian church to making padding. Every 
thing failing to produce the desired result, and relieve 
them of their pain, they refused to draw their portion 
of the national load, kicked the Union in pieces, and 
ran away. They could never be happy again until slav- 
ery should be abolished, or the attitude of the nation 
and of the world toward slavery should be changed. 

It is the same with individuals as with peoples. A 
man cannot long wear a collar that presses upon his 
conscience, without getting through the skin — down 
upon the raw. When a man who sells liquor to his 
neighbors for drink, voluntarily apologizes to me for it, 
or justifies himself in it, I know very well that his con- 
science has a raw place upon it, and that it gives him 
trouble. When a woman takes particular pains to tell 
me that she is exceedingly economical, and that she 
really has had nothing for a year, I cannot but conclude 
that she has been making some expenditure, or some 
series of expenditures, that she knows she cannot afford, 



238 Lessons in Life. 

and that there is a raw place upon her conscience in 
consequence. In truth, I have never known a woman 
who wished to impress me with a sense of her rigid 
economy, who was not more anxious to convince herself 
of it than me. When a man undertakes to soften the 
character of any crime by apologies, and by arguments, 
it is invariably for the purpose of relieving its pressure 
upon a galled conscience, or shaping it to a different 
place. I am afraid the men are few who have escaped 
a galled spot upon their consciences. 

Pride has had a terrible time of it in the world. It 
is, perhaps, the most sensitive spot in human nature. 
Collars, curry-combs, and cold water have alike served 
to torment it. A great multitude of men and women 
have been obliged to work in the collar of poverty, 
against a galled pride, during all their life. They never 
start in the morning without flinching, and never work 
without violence, until their pride has become entirely 
benumbed by pressure. Ah ! if society could be un- 
veiled, how few would be found with pride free from 
scars and raw places ! I once heard a simple boy tell a 
young man that his legs were crooked ; and though the 
lad was very innocent, and only supposed that he had 
made and announced a pleasant discovery, he had, 
alas ! hit the man's pride on the very centre of its sore- 
ness and sensitiveness. One never knows, in large 
things, where he will hit the sensitive places in the pride 
of those he meets ; but in little things he is pretty sure 



Sore Spots and Sensitive Spots. 239 

to learn it concerning everybody. It is always safe to 
suppose that a very small man is sore on the subject of 
bodily dimensions. It will never do for a tall man to 
propose to measure altitude with him in the presence 
of women. It is never safe to inquire the age of any 
lady whom one knows to be more than twenty-five years 
old. There is not one man or woman in a hundred who 
possesses an unpleasant personal peculiarity, without 
getting a galled spot upon personal pride in conse- 
quence. A long nose, a squint eye, a clumsy foot, a 
low forehead, a hump in the back — any one of these will 
not bear mention in the presence of its possessor. 

It is quite amusing to witness the various methods 
resorted to for cheating the world with regard to these 
sore places in personal pride. Men who are conscious 
that they do not possess a particle of musical taste, and 
are really ignorant of the difference between Dundee 
and Yankee Doodle, will profess to be " very fond of 
music," and will not unfrequently convince themselves 
that they are so. Men who are exceedingly sensitive 
touching any eccentricities of person, will be constantly 
joking about their own long noses, or red hair, or big 
feet, and run on about them in the pleasantest sort of 
way, and persist in doing it on all occasions, as if the 
matter were exceedingly amusing to them, when the 
fact is that their pride is very sore in that particular 
spot. A woman who has passed her hour of bloom, 
and feels with sensitive pain the creeping on of ancient 



24-0 Lessons in Life. 

maidenhood, will talk charmingly, and with superfluous 
iteration, about the usefulness of old maids, and the 
independence of their lot — determined to cover up the 
galled spot that burns upon the surface of her personal 
pride. The trick of keeping up the appearances of 
wealth, after wealth is departed, is a familiar one ; and 
though it rarely deceives, it is likely to be persisted in 
to the end of time. It is often very pitiful to witness 
the ingenuity of the efforts that are made to cover from 
public observation the soreness of personal pride, 
caused by a change of circumstances. The Hepsibah 
Pynchons abound in houses of less than seven gables. 

There is probably no harness so apt to gall the 
shoulder of personal pride as that of ambition. The 
number of men in the world whose personal pride has 
a sore on it, inflicted by disappointed ambition, is sadly 
large. I have seen many a worthy man utterly spoiled 
by his failure to reach the political, social, or literary 
eminence at w r hich he has aimed. Thenceforward his 
hand has been against every man, and he has imagined 
that every man's hand has been against him. All who 
contributed to his defeat, and all in any way associated 
with them, have become the subjects of his hatred and 
his animadversion. He has retired into himself, sneer- 
ing at every thing and everybody, doubtful of the sin- 
cerity of all friendly professions, and regarding himself 
as " a passenger," while the poor fools among whom he 
once so gladly numbered himself, chase the baubles by 



Sore Spots and Sensitive Spots. 241 

which his life has been so miserably cheated of its 
meed. It is very hard for a proud man, with a strong 
will, to feel that he has been baffled and beaten ; and a 
really noble man, defeated in his objects by trickery 
and meanness, will sometimes become half insane with 
the wound which his pride has received. He will never 
forget it ; and the old sore can never be touched, even 
in the most accidental way, without calling the fire into 
his eye, and the color into his cheek. In the domain of 
politics "soreheads" notoriously abound, and I sup- 
pose they always will. 

Literary life is probably as prolific of failures, and as 
full of " sore heads " as political. The number of men 
and women who are ambitious of literary distinction, 
and who make great efforts to win it, is very large — 
larger than the world outside of the publisher's private 
office dreams of. The number of manuscripts rejected 
and never published is greater than the number pub- 
lished ; and of those which are published, not one in 
ten satisfies, in its success, the ambition of its author. 
I suppose that it is within the bounds of truth to say that 
nine authors in every ten are disappointed men — men 
whose personal pride is wounded, who believe that the 
world has treated them unjustly, and who cherish a sore 
spot on their personal pride as long as they live. Some 
of these refuse to draw in any harness, and give them- 
selves up to poverty and laziness, as the victims of the 

world's undiscriminating stupidity. Some become 
11 



242 Lessons in Life. 

critics of the works of successful authors, and take their 
revenge in the hearty abuse of their betters. Others 
enter into other departments of effort, but carry with 
them through life the belief that they are out of their 
place, and the conviction that if they had been born in 
a nobler age they would have been recognized as the 
geniuses they imagine themselves to be. 

There is still another class which get sore with draw- 
ing in a harness that God puts upon them, and in the 
adoption of which they have had nothing to do. A 
man of poetic sensibilities finds himself engaged in the 
pursuit of some humdrum calling. He sees how beauti- 
ful poetry is ; he feels its influence upon his soul ; but 
he has no power to create it. Another feels something 
of the divinity of music, but muscular facility has been 
denied to him so that he cannot play, and his voice is 
harsh or feeble so that he cannot sing. He melts and 
glows under the sway of eloquence, and worships at a 
distance the power of the orator over the hearts and 
minds of men ; but he knows that if he were in the 
orator's place, he would break down and become the 
object even of his own contempt. Great susceptibilities 
these people have — passive spirits — open to all good 
impressions, appreciative of that which is best in nature 
and art, yet without the power to act. They must al- 
ways be plates to receive the picture, and never suns 
and cameras to reprint it. They must always live 
within sight of great and beautiful powers, but never 



Sore Spots and Sensitive Spots. 243 

have the privilege of wielding them. Doomed to the 
attitude of receptivity, they see that they can never 
change it ; and that they can never be to others what 
others are to them. Thus they grow sore with the 
thought of their weakness, and a sense of the circum- 
scription of their faculties. They see wonderful things 
— they apprehend the grace and the glory of great 
actions — but they can achieve nothing. Many of these 
walk as in a dream through life — with a sense of wings 
upon their shoulders, clipped or lashed down. They 
see their companions rising, but they cling to the earth, 
and feel the difference as a humiliation. Alas ! how 
many souls chafe against the consciousness of inferior 
powers, till even the fine susceptibilities with which 
nature endowed them are destroyed ! 

There would seem to be no end of the causes which 
produce sore and tender and sensitive spots upon the 
human soul. I have said nothing of grief and love 
and pity and anger, and a whole brood of powerful 
passions, but they are all operative toward the results 
which we are discussing. The cure for these sensitive 
sores is obvious enough. I would prescribe for a 
man as I would for a horse — go out to pasture, or 
adopt another kind of collar, and never wear the old 
one again. If a man has become sore by working 
against the apathy, the misconceptions, the miscon- 
structions, and the prejudices of the world, so that he 
feels the galling burden of the collar in all his actions, 



244 Lessons in Life. 

let him change his style of labor until the ulcer heal. 
If the conscience becomes sore, relieve it of that which 
made it sore, and never believe that padding can effect 
a cure. Even wounded pride will heal if we let it 
alone, and refrain from opening the wound on all occa- 
sions, and rubbing it against the causes which afflicted 
it. All the natural peculiarities of our constitution 
which wound our pride may be happily got along with 
by ignoring them. If my neighbor is a lovable man, 
I do not love him any the less because he wears a long 
nose, and I should never think of it if he were not al- 
ways joking about it, and trying to convince me that 
it did not offend him. A man who quarrels with his 
own constitution, and questions the benevolence that 
adjusted it to its conditions, quarrels with, and ques- 
tions, his Maker. I believe there are no sorenesses of 
the sort we are considering which time or change will 
not heal. 

It seems to me a very melancholy thing for a man 
to carry a mental ulcer with him through life — to feel 
its prick and pang in every effort — to be conscious of 
its presence every hour — to be engaged in covering it 
from sight, or in the attempt to deceive the world with 
regard to it. Life is altogether too good a thing to 
be spoiled by a little sore, or a large one, when there 
exists an obvious mode of cure. It is our immense and 
intense self-consciousness that stands in our way always 
in this matter. The truth is that the world does not 



Sore Spots and Sensitive Spots. 245 

think half so much about us as we imagine it does. A 
man may walk through the city of New York with a 
face " as homely as a hedge-fence/' thinking about it 
all the time, and wondering what people think of it, 
and not a man of all the throng will even see it. It is 
so in the world at large. Our personal peculiarities, 
our personal failures, our personal weaknesses, our per- 
sonal affairs generally possess very little interest for 
others. They have enough to do in taking care of 
themselves, and have weaknesses, failures, and pe- 
culiarities enough of their own ; and if the world should 
spurn our well-meant efforts in its behalf, why, let it 
go. It mends nothing to get sore and sensitive over 
it. When a man truly learns how little important he 
is in the world, he is generally beyond the danger of 
becoming galled by his harness, whatever it may be. 



LESSON XIX. 

THE INFLUENCE OF PRAISE. 

" Now I praise you, brethren, that ye remember me in all things, and keep 
the ordinances as I delivered them unto you." — St. Paul. 

" O popular applause ! What heart of man 
Is proof against thy sweet seducing charms ? " 

— COWPER. 

" Arhaces. Why now, you flatter. 

" Mardonius. I never understood the word." 

— A King and No King. 

" Praising what is lost 
Makes the remembrance dear." 

— Shakspeare. 

IT is pleasant to be praised. The man does not live 
who is insensible to honest praise. The love of ap- 
probation is as natural to every human soul as the love 
of offspring, or the love of liberty. It was planted 
there by God's hand, and it is as useful and important 
in its fruit, as it is fragrant and beautiful in its flower. 
I repeat that the man does not live who is insensible to 
honest praise. That great orator who seems to be a 



The Influence of Praise. 247 

king in the world, independent of his race, holding do- 
minion over human hearts, lifted far above the neces- 
sity of the plaudits of those around him, will pause 
with gratified and grateful ear, to listen to expressions 
of approval and admiration from the humblest lips. 
The greatest mind drinks praise as a pleasant draught, 
if it be honest and deserved. Perhaps you think that 
Doctor of Divinity who weighs two hundred pounds, 
more or less, and is clad in glossy broad-cloth, and lifts 
his shining forehead above a white cravat, as Mont 
Blanc pierces a belt of cloud, and talks articulated 
thunder, and veils his wisdom behind gold-mounted 
spectacles, and moves among men with ineffable dig- 
nity, is above the need of, and the appetite for, praise. 
Ah ! you don't know the soft old heart under that 
satin waistcoat ! It can be made as warm and gentle 
and grateful, with just and generous praise, as that of 
a boy. Nay, the barber who takes his reverent nose 
between his thumb and finger, and sweeps the beard 
from his benevolent chin, understands exactly what to 
say in order to draw from his pocket an extra sixpence. 
There is no head so high, there is no neck so stiff, there 
is no back so straight, that it will not bend to take the 
flowers which praise tosses upon its path. 

" It's a sign of weakness, after all," sighs my friend, 
who is not praised quite as much as he would like to be. 
Begging your pardon, sir, it is no such thing. The 
strongest Being in the universe — the God of the uni- 



248 Lessons in Life. 

verse — is the one who demands, receives, and accepts 
the most praise. Listen for a moment to those marvel- 
lous ascriptions which rise to Him from the bosom of 
Christendom as ceaselessly and beautifully as clouds 
from the Heaven-reflecting ocean : " Thou art the ' 
King, immortal, invisible. Thou art the Source of all 
life, the Author of all beings the Fountain of all light 
and love and joy. Thou art Love itself; Thou art the 
Sum of all perfections. For what Thou art, we worship 
Thee ; for what Thou hast done for us, in thy infinite 
loving-kindness, we praise Thee. We bless Thy Holy 
Name. We call upon our souls and all within us to 
magnify Thy name forever and ever." The Bible itself 
has given us almost numberless forms of expression into 
which we may cast our divinest adoration, and the 
broadest outpourings of our hearts. The poets of all 
ages have been touched to their finest utterances in the 
rapture of worship and of praise. 

Now why should God want praise of us ? It certainly 
is not because He is weak. Can it be because He 
wishes by means of it to produce some desired effect in 
us ? Is there no hearing of this praise in Heaven ? Are 
we who sing and shout mere brawlers, who get a little 
strength of lungs by the exercise? There are some 
poor souls, doubtless, who believe this, as they believe 
that prayer has significance only as a moral exercise, 
and effect only as it reacts upon the soul. I believe 
that praise is pleasant to Him who sits upon the throne 



The Influence of Praise. 249 

— that the honest and sincere expressions of love and 
adoration, and gratitude and praise, that rise to Him 
from the earth are at least shining ripples upon the 
soundless ocean of His bliss. Out from Him proceed, 
through myriad channels of ehiuence, the expressions 
of His love for those whom He has made and endowed 
with intelligence ; and I believe that it is tributary to 
His happiness when back along these lines of manifesta- 
tion there flows a tide of grateful recognition and ador- 
ing praise. Even a God would pine in loneliness if 
there should come back no echoes to His loving voice — 
no refluent wave to the mighty bosom which makes all 
shores vocal with its breath and beating. God demands 
of all men that which all men owe to Him — that which 
His perfections and His acts deserve. 

This love of approbation in men, then, is Heaven- 
born and Godlike. The desire for approbation is as 
legitimate as the desire for food. I do not suppose that 
it should be greatly a motive of action — perhaps it 
should never be ; but when a man from a good motive 
does a good thing, he desires the approval of the hearts 
that love him, and he receives their expressions of praise 
with grateful pleasure. Nay, if these expressions of 
praise are denied to him, he feels in a certain sense de- 
frauded of his right. He feels that justice has not been 
done him — that there is something due to him that has 
not been paid. I met a friend the other day who un-1 
veiled his heart to me ; and I caught in the vision his 



250 Lessons in Life. 

heart's sense of the world's injustice. He had been a 
very poor boy, and had been bred under a poor boy's 
disadvantages ; but a strong will, a good heart, fine 
talents, and a favoring fortune, brought to him gold, and 
lands, and equipage. They brought these not only, but 
they brought the power to become a benefactor of his na- 
tive town. He won competence for himself, and then he 
became a public-spirited citizen, and did that for his home 
which no other man had done. Now he had felt that he 
had done for himself and for those around him nobly ; 
and it was natural that he should desire some response 
— some expression of praise. He did not get it. Peo- 
ple either envied him, or they misconstrued his actions ; 
and he felt that his townsmen had been and were un- 
just — that they owed him something which they had 
failed to pay. 

The world is so much accustomed to confound praise 
with flattery, that if I were to go to a man with an honest 
tribute like this : " My friend, I admire you very much ; 
I think you possess noble talents, fine tastes, and an ex- 
cellent heart; and I regard your course of action and 
your life with the warmest approval," he would, nine 
times in ten, look into my face either with astonishment, 
or amusement, or offence. He would not know whether 
I intended to insult him or to practise a joke upon him. 
Praise between man and man is so rare that we neither 
know how to bestow it nor how to receive it. This is 
carried to such an extent that one -half of the family life 



The Influence of Praise. 251 

of Christendom is deprived of it. The husbands who 
never have a word of praise for their wives, the wives 
who never have a word of praise for their husbands, and 
the parents who only find fault with their children, are, 
I fear, in the majority. I know that the women are 
numberless who devote themselves throughout all their 
life to the comfort, the happiness, and the prosperity of 
their husbands, and who lie down in their graves at last, 
thirsty for their praise. Their patient and ceaseless 
ministry is taken as a matter of course, without the 
slightest recognition of its value as the expression of a 
loving and devoted heart. Now I believe that praise is 
due to the love and unselfish devotion of a wife, just as 
really as it is to the loving-kindness and beneficent min- 
istry of God, differing only in kind and degree. Hus- 
bands may die worth millions, and leave it all to their 
wives (subject to the usual contemptible provision that 
they do not marry again), and yet be shamefully in- 
debted to them forever and forever. 

Children are often spoiled because they get no credit 
for what they do. Of censure, they get their due ; but 
of praise, never. They do a thing which they feel to be 
praiseworthy, but it is not noticed. When a child takes 
pains to do well, it feels itself paid for every endeavor 
by praise ; and the most unsophisticated child knows 
when praise is its due. It often comes to its mother's 
knee in natural simplicity, and asks for it. It is very 
well for men to say that " virtue is its own reward," and 



252 Lessons hi Life. 

that the highest satisfactions are those which spring 
from a sense of duty accomplished ; but praise is pleas- 
ant and precious to men who not only say this, but feci 
it. Many a noble and sensitive pastor is disheartened 
because no one of the multitude which he so carefully 
and constantly feeds, ever tells him, with an open, hon- 
est utterance, his good opinion of him, and his satisfac- 
tion with his labors. Many an excellent author toils 
over his work in secret distrust, and issues it in fear and 
trembling, feeling that a word of praise will exalt him 
into a grateful and fruitful joy, and that an unjust and 
unkind criticism will half kill him. 

It is true that the mind is unhealthy which lives on 
praise ; and it is just as true that he is mean and unjust 
who fails to award praise to those who earn it. The ap- 
petite for praise may become just as morbid and greedy 
by improper stimulus and abuse, as any other natural 
and legitimate appetite. It frequently does so, in those 
who associate it very intimately with success and gain. 
Actors and public singers, and all those whose success 
in life and whose pecuniary income depend upon the 
amount of popular praise they can win, are very apt to 
become greedy of praise, and will not unfrequently re- 
ceive it in its most disgusting forms. There are lec- 
turers and public speakers who depend upon praise for 
strength to speak an hour — men who, if their perform- 
ances are repetitions, wait at certain points for ap- 
plause, as a horse, travelling over a familiar road, stops 



The Influence of Praise. 253 

always at certain hills to rest and take breath, and at 
certain wayside cisterns to drink. Many of these men 
demand praise, talking about themselves continually, 
and begging assent to their self-laudations. In these 
cases, praise becomes the dominant motive, and de- 
grades and belittles its subjects always. The voluntary 
profanity and the impure jests that so often offend the 
ears of decent people at the theatre, are put forth to call 
out a cheer from groundlings whose praise is always es- 
sential disgrace. The jealousy and the quarrelsomeness 
of authors, actors, and singers, result from the fact that 
praise has become so much the motive of their life that 
they grudge the applause awarded to their fellows. 

The difference between praise and flattery is as wide 
as that between praise and blame. Praise is a legiti- 
mate tribute to worth and worthy doing. It is entirely 
unselfish in its motive. It is the discharge of a debt. 
Flattery originates always in a selfish motive, and seeks 
by falsehood to feed an unhealthy desire for praise. A 
man whom it is proper to praise cannot be flattered, and 
a man who can be flattered ought not to be praised. It 
is always safe to praise a man who really deserves praise. 
Such a man usually knows how much he deserves, and 
will take only the exact amount. Indeed, he will be 
very particular to give back the right change. The flat- 
terer, is like the man who stands behind a bar to deal 
out poison to a debased appetite, for gain. The man 
Avho utters honest praise is noble ; the man who receives 



254 Lessons in Life. 

it does so without humiliation, and is made strong by it. 
The flatterer is always a scoundrel, and the glad receiver 
of his falsehoods is always a fool — natural or otherwise. 

The desire for praise is often very strong in those who 
never do any thing to deserve it, and who are never 
ready to award it to those who have earned it. There 
are men in every community who are universally recog- 
nized as supremely selfish, yet supremely greedy of 
praise. This desire does not arise from over-indulgence 
in the article, for they never had even a taste of it. 
They are known to be selfish and hard and mean, yet 
they long for praise and popularity with a desire that is 
almost ludicrous. They never give a dollar to the poor, 
they never deny themselves for the good of others, they 
are shut up in themselves— without any good or great or 
generous qualities — yet they clutch at every w r ord that 
sounds like praise as if they were starved. The only 
use of the desire in these men is to furnish the world 
with a nose by which to lead them. 

It is a mistake to suppose that praise should be ren- 
dered directly in all cases to the persons to whom it is 
due, for the relations between debtor and creditor 
may be such as to forbid it. I may be a humble ad- 
mirer of some great and good man, who has been the 
doer of great and good deeds, but my personal relations 
to him may be such that it is not proper for me to ap- 
proach him, and pay my tribute into his hands. Men 
are often careful of the channels through which the re- 



The Influence of Praise. 255 

sponse to their deeds, in the hearts of other men, 
reaches them ; but I may discharge my debt, neverthe- 
less, by sounding their praise in other ears. It is 
usually the work of those who stand next to a man, to 
gather up the tributes of a grateful and admiring com- 
munity or people, and bear them to him to whom they 
belong. Because I may not approach a praiseworthy 
man with the offering which I feel to be his due, it is 
none the less incumbent upon me to discharge the debt. 
Just and generous praise will come from every just and 
generous nature in some form, and will be deposited in 
some bosom, subject to the draft of the owner. 

It is not easy for any man ■ to work alone, out of the 
sight of his fellows, and beyond the recognition of his 
deeds. However self-sufficient he may be, he is 
stronger, and he feels stronger, in the approbation of 
generous and appreciative hearts. We are very much 
in the habit of thinking that men of great minds and 
noble deeds and self-reliant natures do not need the ap- 
proval of other minds, and do not care for it ; but God 
never lifted any man so far above his fellows that their 
voices were not the most delightful sounds that reached 
him. If this be true of great natures, how much more 
evidently true is it of smaller natures ! We, the people 
of the world, go leaning on each other ; and we totter 
sometimes, even to falling, when a shoulder drops from 
underneath our hand. We need encouragement with 
every step. In the path of worthy doing, we need some 



256 Lessons in Life. 

loving voice to witness with our approving consciences, 
that we have done that which becomes us as men and 
women. We long to hear the sentence, " well done, 
thou good and faithful servant," from day to day ; and 
when we hear it, we are ready for further labor. We 
need also to give this daily meed of praise to those who 
deserve it, that we may keep ourselves unselfish, and 
root out from ourselves all niggardliness. We owe it to 
ourselves to pay off every debt as soon as it is incurred, 
and never, under any selfish motive, to withhold it. 

It is notorious that the finest spirits of the world, and 
the world's greatest benefactors, have gone through life 
unrecognized. They have lain down in their graves at 
last without having received a tithe of the debt which 
their generation owed to them. When the turf has 
closed over their bosoms, and the mean jealousies of 
their contemporaries have been vanquished by death, 
then whole nations have thronged to do them honor. 
Songs have been sung to their memory ; and the words 
of praise which would have done so much to cheer and 
strengthen them once, are poured out in abundance 
when the need of them is past. Stately monuments are 
erected to them, and their children are petted and 
caressed, and a tardy, jealous, and hypocritical world 
strives to win self-respect by the payment of a debt 
long overdue. " Speak nothing but good of the dead" 
is a proverb that has its birth in 'the world's sense of its 
own meanness, — the consciousness that it had not done 



The Influence of Praise. 257 

justice to the dead while they were living. Many a 
man is systematically abused during all his active life, 
only to lie down in his grave amid the laudations of a 
nation. I know of nothing in all the exhibitions of hu- 
man nature meaner than this. It amounts to a virtual 
confession of fraud. It is the acknowledgment of a 
debt, which, while the creditor could get any benefit 
from it, the world refused to pay. Posthumous fame 
may be a very fine thing ; but I have never known a 
really worthy man, with a healthy nature and a healthy 
character, who did not prize far above it the love, the 
confidence, and the praise of the generation to which he 
gave his life. 

It is the mark of a noble nature to be quick to recog- 
nize that which is praiseworthy in others, and ready on 
the moment to award to it its fitting meed. Such a na- 
ture looks for that which is good in men, sees it, en- 
courages it, and gives it the strength of its indorsal. 
All that is noble in other men thrives in the presence of 
such a nature as this. It is sunshine and showers and 
healthful breezes to all that is amiable and laudable in 
the souls around it. Woman grows more womanly and 
lovable and happy in its presence. Men grow heroic 
and unselfish by its side. Children gather from it en- 
couragement and inspiration, and impulse and direction 
into a beautiful life. What knows the charming wife 
whom w r e lay in the tomb, of the tears we shed above 
her, of the endearments we lavish upon her memory, 



258 Lessons in Life. 

and of the praises of her virtue with which we burden 
the ears of our friends? This same wife would have 
drunk such expressions during her life with satisfaction 
and gratification beyond expression. Why can death 
alone teach us that those whom we love are dear ? 
Why must they be placed forever beyond our sight be- 
fore our lips can be unsealed ? Why must it be that in 
our public, social, and family life we have penalties in 
abundance, but no rewards — censure in profusion, but 
no praise — fault-finding without stint of freedom, but 
approbation dealt out by constrained and niggardly 
hands ? 



LESSON XX. 

UNNECESSAR Y B URDENS. 

" I groan beneath this cowardice of heart 
Which rolls the evil to be borne to-day 
Upon to-morrow, loading it with gloom." 

— Alexander Smith. 

"There are two ways of escaping from suffering ; the one by rising above 
the causes of conflict, the other by sinking below them ; for there is quiet in 
the soul when all its faculties are harmonized about any centre. The one is 
the religious method ; the other is the vulgar, worldly method. The one is 
called Christian elevation ; the other, stoicism." — Beecher. 

THERE were few houses of the old time in New Eng- 
land that did not contain a well-thumbed volume 
of the Pilgrim's Progress ; and there were few children 
who did not become acquainted with its contents, either 
through its text or its pictures. I am sure that all the 
children felt as I did — very tired with sympathy for the 
poor pilgrim who was obliged, to lug that ugly pack from 
picture to picture, and very " glad and lightsome" when 
at last it fell from his shoulders, and went tumbling 
down the hill. We did not marvel that "he stood still 
awhile, to look and wonder." or that "he looked, and 



260 Lessons in Life. 

looked again, even till the springs that were in his head 
sent the waters down his cheeks." It was a great thing 
for a man who was bent on progress to be freed from an 
unnecessary burden ; and it may be pleasant to know 
that at the foot of the hill of life the same sepulchre 
which swallowed the burden of Bunyan's Pilgrim, so 
that he " saw it no more," still stands open, and has 
room in it for all the burdens of all the pilgrims there 
are in the world. 

I wonder whether all the pilgrims who have under- 
taken the journey " from this world to that which is to 
come " ever lose the pack whose fastenings were so 
quickly dissolved when our favorite old Pilgrim looked 
upon the Cross ? I doubt it. I hear many people 
groaning throughout the whole course of their Christian 
experience with the oppressive weight of this same bur- 
den. Instead of losing it at the sight of the cross, they 
hold to it, and will not let it go. They mean well 
enough ; but they do not understand that the cross was 
reared, and the meek sufferer nailed to it, that the bur- 
den of the penitent soul might be forever rolled off. 
They carry their own sins, and never yield the pack to 
Him who bore it for them " in His own body, on the 
tree." They are never "light and gladsome" with a 
sense of great relief; and their Christian progress is 
sadly impeded by the burden from which the central 
truth of the Christian scheme releases them. If there 
be any such thing as forgiveness, then there is such a 



Unnecessary Burdens. 261 

thing as release ; but I think there are many subjects of 
free and full forgiveness who insist on carrying their old, 
dirty packs to their graves, staggering under them all 
the way. 

But this is not what I started to write about. A great 
many men carry their life as an author carries a book 
which he is writing — never losing the sense of their bur- 
den. When a writer undertakes a book, and feels the 
necessity of perfect continuity of thought and symmetry 
of structure, he can never lay it wholly aside. When 
once he has taken up the first chapter, and compre- 
hended his materials and machinery and end, he does 
not dare to lay down his work, or diverge from the grand 
channel of his thought, until the last chapter is finished. 
He can take no three months' vacation ; he can read no 
books that do not contribute to his progress in the 
chosen direction ; he can never wholly lay aside the 
burden that is on him. It is like lifting upon one's 
shoulder the end of a long pole, and then walking under 
it from end to end. The burden upon the shoulder is 
not relieved until the whole length has been passed, and 
it drops as we walk from under it. Such is the way that 
many men, and, perhaps, most men, carry life. If their 
business troubles them, they have no power to throw it 
off, and no disposition to try to do it. They are entirely 
aware that they gain nothing by carrying their tedious 
burden, but they carry it. Not content with doing their 
duty, and trying their best while actively engaged, they 



262 Lessons in Life. 

take home with them a long face, breathe sighs around 
them in the saddest fashion, and really unfit themselves 
for the healthy exercise of their reason, and the active 
employment of their faculties. 

With men of this stamp, it makes little difference 
whether they are prosperous or otherwise. If times are 
good, and they really have no fault to find with matters 
as they exist, they become troubled about bad times 
that may possibly lie just ahead. " Oh, it's all well 
enough to-day," they say, " but you can't tell what is 
coming ; " so they bind the burden of the future upon 
them, and undertake to steal a march on God's provi- 
dence. Such a thing as doing the duty of a single day, 
and doing it well, and then throwing off the burden of 
care, and having a good time in some rational way, 
until the hour comes for the commencement of the next 
day's duty, they are strangers to. They walk into their 
houses with a cloud upon their faces. They have no 
words of cheer for those whom they have left at home 
during the day. They are moody and sullen and sad — 
absorbed by their troubled thoughts — taking no interest 
in the schemes, and having no sympathy with the 
trials, of their wives and children, and making no effort 
to relieve themselves of their burdens. If they pray 
at all, they practically pray like this : " Give us this 
day our daily bread, and to-morrow, and the next day, 
and the day after, and next year, and fifty years to 
come ; and lest Thou shouldst forget it, or neglect to 



Unnecessary Burdens, 263 

answer us, we have undertaken to look after the matter 
ourselves." 

To say nothing of the constant sadness, uneasiness, 
and discomfort of such a life as this, to all those who 
lead it, and to all who are intimately associated with 
them, the permanent effect of it upon the character of 
its subjects is to make them selfish and hard, and small 
and mean. Whatever may be their circumstances, they 
become sensitive upon any expenditure of money for 
purposes beyond the simplest necessities of personal and 
family life. This result is both natural and inevitable. 
A man whose life, in and out of his counting-room, is 
absorbed by business, ceases, at last, to be any thing but 
a man of business ; and his mind contracts and hardens 
down to its central, motive idea. That which becomes 
the dominant aim and the grand end of life, always de- 
termines the character of life ; and I have known young 
men, even before they have approached middle age, to 
become mean and miserly to such a degree as to disap- 
point and disgust their friends, simply in consequence 
of a few years' absorption in business. Business is not 
life, nor is it life's end. It is simply a means of life ; 
and all true living lies outside of it. Ministry is the 
mission of business — ministry to necessity, to comfort, 
and to personal, family, and social life into which busi- 
ness never enters, save with an unwelcome foot and a 
disturbing hand. This everlasting hugging of the 
burden of business, is, therefore, not only a painful 



264 Lessons in Life. 

task, but it is permanently damaging to all who indulge 
in it. 

" It is very easy to talk," says my friend, with a load 
upon his shoulders, "but talking does not pay notes at 
the bank, and keep creditors easy, and provide for one's 
family." Granted : and now will you be kind enough to 
tell me how many notes you ever paid at the bank, and how 
much provision you ever made for your family by dwell- 
ing upon your troubles out of business hours ? If your 
retort is good for anything, mine is. You never accom- 
plished one good thing in your life by making yourself 
and others unhappy through constant contemplation of 
trouble when not engaged in active efforts to extricate 
yourself from it. You never gained a single inch of prog- 
ress by dwelling upon miscarriages in business which 
you could not avoid. All your absorption, all your sad 
reflection, all your misgivings about the future, all your 
care beyond the exercise of your best ability in action, 
has not only been utterly useless, but it has injured the 
comfort of all around you, destroyed the peace of your 
life, cheated you out of the reward of your labor, and 
made a smaller, harder, meaner man of you. If any 
good result could be secured by carrying the burden of 
your business into all your life, then there would be 
some apology for it ; but you know that no such result 
can be secured. "It is very easy to talk," my friend 
persists in saying, "but one cannot always command 
one's mind, in such a matter as this." Did you ever 



Unnecessary Burdens. 265 

try ? Have you ever systematically tried to do this ? Is 
it your regular aim, after you have discharged the busi- 
ness of the day, to throw off care until the next day's 
business is undertaken ? No ? Then how do you know 
whether it is easy or not ? 

I believe it is in the power of every man, who has not 
too long abused himself, to lay aside every night his 
pack of mental care and anxiety, and enter into life. 
Not only this, but I believe that it is absolutely essential 
to his business success that he do this. A man who 
dwells constantly upon the dark side of his affairs, and 
is troubled and gloomy in his apprehensions concerning 
the future, becomes a weak and timid man — disqualified 
in many essential respects for the work of his life. His 
mind needs rest and revivification. Suppose an ass were 
to be treated in the manner in which men treat them- 
selves. Suppose the burden which we place upon him 
during the day were kept lashed to his back at night, so 
that he must bear it, either standing or lying, off duty 
as well as on. How long would he be worth any thing 
for labor ? The illustration is apposite in every particular. 
If the mind is to be kept fit for business, it is at regular 
periods to be kept out of business. A great multitude of 
business failures are attributable, I have no doubt, to the 
debilitating and damaging effect of carrying the burdens 
of business between business hours. Men become in a 
measure sick and insane by dwelling upon their affairs, 
when they should be receiving rest and refreshment. 



266 Lessons in Life. 

Again, men who insist upon keeping their packs upon 
their shoulders, practically deny the existence of the 
providence of a Being superior to themselves, and domi- 
nant in all human affairs. If I were to say to one of 
these men : " you do not believe in Providence at all," 
he would accuse me of a harsh judgment, and feel in- 
jured by it ; but it is certainly legitimate for me to ask 
him what evidence he gives of his belief. All, indeed, 
profess to believe in Providence, in a certain general 
way. The popular idea is very foggy upon the matter. 
We somehow imagine that God knows every thing in 
general and nothing in particular — that He takes inter- 
est in, supervision of, and controlling influence over, 
matters at large, with an imperial disregard of details 
— that He moulds with a majestic hand the character 
and destiny of nations, but never condescends to med- 
dle with the small and insignificant affairs of individuals. 
Providence, in this view, would seem to be very much 
like certain tongs used in a blacksmith's shop, whose 
jaws do not wholly close — convenient for handling large 
pieces of iron, but incapable of grasping a nail. Or, 
Providence is like a great general, who only directs 
the movements of large bodies of men, deals only with 
the officers, and never thinks of so small a thing as look- 
ing after the blanket of a private soldier, or dressing a 
wounded finger. 

It is very easy to perceive that such a Providence 
as this has no practical value in every-day, individual 



Unnecessary 'Burdens. 267 

life. Very evidently it is not that Providence which 
numbers the hairs of men's heads, and without whose 
notice not a sparrow falls to the ground. One is a Provi- 
dence made by men who undertake to measure God by 
themselves ; the other is the Providence revealed in 
the Bible. God exercises a special providence, which 
reaches to the minutest affairs of the most insignificant 
man, or we are all in a condition of essential orphanage. 
A special Providence denied, and prayer becomes a 
mockery, devotion a deceit, and the sense of individ- 
ual responsibility slavery to a superstitious idea. Now 
I do not pretend to address myself to men who do 
not believe in prayer. I know men well enough to 
know that there are very few of them who do not be- 
lieve in prayer, and that there are very few of them 
who do not, particularly in moments of danger, pray. 
Deep down under the thickest crusts of depravity there 
lies the conviction, always ready to rise in painful emer- 
gencies, that God takes cognizance of every man, and 
is able to help him. Smooth away the idea of Provi- 
dence as we may, into an unmeaning generality, the 
time comes, in every man's life, when he recognizes the 
fact that God is dealing with him ; and he may as well 
recognize the fact all the time as when he is driven to 
feel that he has no help in himself. 

So, if there be a special Providence, it is a Provi- 
dence to be trusted ; and the man who believes in it 
has no apology for carrying a single unnecessary bur- 



268 Lessons i?i Life. 

den. This providence in all human affairs, is like the 
principle of vitality in the vegetable world. It does 
not release us from effort, in every legitimate and 
needful way, for the accomplishment of our laudable 
purposes ; but when our efforts are complete, it takes 
care of the rest. What should we think of the farmer 
who could never roll the burden of his cornfield from 
his mind, and who, after hoeing his ground repeatedly, 
and cutting or covering every weed, should go night 
after night and sit up with it, and think of it, and dream 
of it all the while ? He has done all there is for him 
to do, and beyond this he cannot control an hour of 
sunshine, a drop of dew, or a single cloud-full of rain. 
He cannot influence the law of growth in any particu- 
lar. His field is in the control of a power entirely 
above and beyond him ; and every thought he gives 
to it, after having done what he can for its prosperity, 
is utterly useless. It is his business to trust. Having 
done what he can, the remainder is in the hands of Him 
who feeds the springs of being with light and heat and 
moisture. It is thus that man's affairs grow while he 
sleeps. The hand that ministers to every plant will 
not fail to minister to him for whose use the plant was 
made. 

Why do not men trust in Providence ? Simply 
because, in their usual moods and in their usual cir- 
cumstances, they do not believe in it. There is no 
other explanation. You, my friend, who carry your 



Unnecessary Burdens. 269 

burdens around on your shoulders all the time, and 
who, perhaps, pray every morning and every night, do 
not believe in Providence. You do not feel that you 
can trust Providence. You assent to all that I say 
upon the subject, but, after all, your belief in Provi- 
dence has no genuine vitality. You do not believe in 
it as you believe in the purity of your wife or the honor 
of your friend. You do not rely upon it for an hour. 
You do nod your head and say — "yes, yes ; " and you 
think you are sincere ; but you deceive yourself. So 
long as you persist in carrying your pack, which is a 
very unpleasant burden, as you know, you do not be- 
lieve in Providence ; else you would trust in it. You 
are tired and harassed by your daily labor ; and it is 
very natural to suppose that if you could remove your 
burden each evening, and place it in the charge of one 
whom you believe would take care of it, you would do 
it with gladness. You fail to do it, and what is the 
natural conclusion ? It is that your belief in Provi- 
dence is a pretence. You believe in the honor of your 
friend, and you trust him. You believe in the honesty 
and ability of your debtor, and you trust him. You 
trust every thing and everybody that you firmly be- 
lieve in ; and the only reason why you do not roll off 
the burden that oppresses you, every day and every 
hour of your life, and commit it to the care of Provi- 
dence, is, that you do not believe in Providence. 

We are in the habit of talking about the world as a 



270 Lessons in Life. 

world of care, and speaking of human life as insepara- 
bly accompanied by trouble. This is, indeed, the truth ; 
but if we were to remove from the world all its useless 
care, and take from life all its unnecessary trouble, 
they would be transformed into such bright and pleas- 
ant things that we should hardly know them. I know 
very few men and women who do not bear about with 
them care and trouble which God never put upon them, 
and which He has no desire to see upon their shoulders. 
It does not belong to them. It relates to things that 
are in the realm of Providence alone, or to things over 
which they have no control. The future is God's, but 
they voluntarily take it upon their shoulders, and try 
to bear it. They pluck a section of God's eternity out 
of His hands, and groan with the burden. They as- 
sume care which is not their own — which belongs to the 
Controller of their lives, and the Governor of the uni- 
verse. It is care for that which is beyond human care 
— anxiety for that which anxiety cannot reach — trouble 
about that which we can neither make nor mend — 
that oppresses humanity. We can bear our daily bur- 
dens very well. We can go through our regular hours 
of bodily and mental labor, and feel the better rather 
than the worse for them ; but to care for that which 
our care cannot touch, and to be troubled about that 
which is entirely beyond our sphere — this is the burden 
that breaks the back of the world — this is the burden 
which we bind to our shoulders with obstinate fatuity. 



LESSON XXL 

PROPER PEOPLE AND PERFECT PEOPLE. 

" I must have liberty 
Withal, as large a charter as the wind 
To blow on whom I please." 

— Shakspeare. 

"They say best men are moulded out of fault." 

— The Same. 

" There's no such thing in nature, and you'll draw 
A faultless monster which the world ne^r saw." 

— Sheffield. 

NATURE calls for room and for freedom — room for 
her ocean and freedom for its waves ; room for 
her rivers and freedom for their flowing ; room for her 
forests and freedom for every tree to respond to the in- 
fluences of earth and sky according to its law. Ex- 
ceedingly proper things are not at all in the line of na- 
ture. Nature never trims a hedge, or cuts off the tail 
of a horse. Nature never compels a brook to flow in a 
right line, but permits it to make just as many turns in 
a meadow as it pleases. Nature is very careless about 



272 Lessons in Life. 

the form of her clouds, and masses and colors them with 
great disregard of the opinions of the painters. Nature 
never thinks of smoothing off her rocks, and cleaning 
away her mud, and keeping herself trim and neat. She 
does very improper things in a very impulsive manner. 
Instead of contriving some safe, silent, and secret way 
to dispose of her electricity, she comes out with a blind- 
ing flash and a stunning crash, and a rush of rain that 
very likely fills the mountain streams to overflowing, 
and destroys bridges and booms, and cabins and corn- 
fields. On the whole, though nature keeps up a re- 
spectable appearance, I suppose that, in the opinion of 
my particular friend Miss Nancy, she would be im- 
proved by taking a few lessons of a French gardener. 

I have alluded to my particular friend Miss Nancy. 
Perhaps T ought to say, at starting, that Miss Nancy is 
a man, and that I use the name bestowed upon him by 
his enemies, because it is, in a very important sense, de- 
scriptive. Miss Nancy's boots are faithfully polished 
twice a day. His linen is immaculate ; and the tie of 
his cravat is square and faultless. He never makes a 
mistake in grammar while engaged in conversation. 
He is versed in all the forms and usages of society, and 
particularly at home in gallant attention to what he calls 
" the ladies." He seems to have lost every rough cor- 
ner, if he ever had one. In politics and religion, he is 
just as proper as in social life. The most respectable 
religion is his religion ; and the politics that shun ex- 



Proper People and Perfect People. 273 

tremes are his politics. I think he is what they call a 
conservative. At any rate, I never knew him to do a 
rash or impulsive thing, or speak an improper word in 
his life. I think he is as nearly perfect as any man I 
ever saw. 

But, after all, Miss Nancy is not a popular man. 
He will probably live and die an old bachelor, because 
all the women will persist in laughing at him. He is 
certainly good-looking, his dress is unexceptionable, 
his manners are " as good as they make them," and his 
morals are as proper as his manners ; yet I have not yet 
seen the woman who would speak a pleasant word of 
my friend. He is decidedly a "woman's man," yet no 
woman will own him, and mo woman feels comfortable 
with him. His language is so carefully guarded against 
all impropriety of style and structure, that she feels as 
if he were criticising every word she utters, as well as 
measuring his own. His manners are so very proper 
that they are formal and constrained, and make her un- 
comfortable. His sentiments and opinions are so very 
conservative, that they have no vitality in them. With 
a curious perverseness, the most gentle and accom- 
plished women will turn from him with a sense of re- 
lief, to join in the society of a hearty fellow with a loud 
laugh and a dash of slang, and a free and easy way with 
him. It may be difficult to explain all this, but it is 
true. An exceedingly proper man is never a popular 
man. That life which is controlled by rigid and unvary- 



274 Lessons in Life. 

ing rules, and regulated by conventionalities in every 
minute particular, and restrained in every impulse by 
notions of propriety, is unlovely and unnatural, and can 
never be otherwise. 

The instincts of men are always right in this and all 
cognate matters. All formalism is offensive to good 
taste. The painter does not study landscape in a gar- 
den. Formal isles, closely-trimmed trees, rose-bushes 
on the top of tall sticks, flowers tied to supports, vines 
trained upon trellises, lakes with clipped and pebbled 
margins and India-rubber swans — these are not pic- 
turesque. There is no more inspiration in them than 
there would be in a row of tenement houses in the city. 
The painter looks for beauty out where nature reigns 
undisturbed amid her imperfections, — where the aisles 
are made by the deer going to his lick ; where the trees 
are never trimmed save by the lightning or the hurricane ; 
where the rose-bushes spread their branches and the 
vines trail themselves at liberty ; and where the lake 
looks up into the faces of trees centuries old, and hems 
itself in with thickets of alders and green reaches of 
flags and rushes, and throbs to the touch of the moun- 
tain breeze, while on its bosom 

"The black duck, with her glossy breast 
Sits swinging silently." 

A little child whose head is piled with laces and rib- 
bons, whose dress is a mass of embroidery, and who is 



Proper People and Perfect People. 275 

booted and gloved and otherwise oppressed by parental 
vanity and extravagance, is not picturesque, any further 
than its face goes. The portrait painter will cling to the 
face and let the clothes alone. All this trickery of art, 
brought into comparison or contrast with the simple 
beauty of nature, is offensive. Yet a little beggar boy, 
with an old straw hat on, and with bare, brown feet, and 
a burnt shoulder which his torn shirt refuses to cover, 
would be a painter's joy. Here would be drapery that 
he would delight to paint, simply because there would 
be no formality about it. It is impossible for us to know 
how ridiculous a dress-coat is until we see it in a statue. 
We are obliged to put our modern sages and heroes into 
togas and blankets and long cloaks in order to make 
them presentable to posterity. 

We never find groups of accordant, striking facts like 
these — and their number could be largely increased — 
without finding that they are all strung together by an 
important law. All life demands room and freedom — 
freedom to manifest itself in every way, according to the 
law of its being and the range of its circumstances. All 
life is individual and characteristic, and comes reluc- 
tantly under the sway of outside forces. It is not nat- 
ural to be proper, or to love propriety. In saying this I 
simply mean that it is against nature to bring one's in- 
dividuality under the curbing and controlling hands of 
others— to make the notions of the world the law and 
limit of one's liberty, and to square every word and 



276 Lessons hi Life. 

every act by arbitrary rules imposed by cliques and cus- 
toms. A man who has been clipped in all his puttings- 
forth, and modelled by outside influences, until it is ap- 
parent that he is governed from without rather than 
from within, is just as unnatural an object as a tree that 
has been clipped and tied and bent until its top has 
grown into the form of a cube. Thus the reason why 
Miss Nancy is not popular, and why the women refuse 
to delight in him, is, that he is not his own master — that 
he has, in himself, no independent life. It is not proper 
that he give utterance to his impulses ; — so he suppresses 
them. It is not proper that he frankly reveal the emo- 
tions of his heart ; so he conceals them. It is not proper 
that he enter enthusiastically into any work or any pleas- 
ure ; so he is a constant check to the enthusiasm of 
others. It is not proper that he speak the words that 
spring to his lips when his weak sensibilities are touched ; 
so he studies his language, and shapes his phrases to the 
accepted models. Thus is he shortened in on every 
side, until his individuality is all gone, arid the human- 
ity in him becomes as characterless as its expression. 
Every utterance of his life is made with a well-measured 
reference to certain standards to which he is an acknowl- 
edged slave. 

A scrupulously proper man is often a self-deceiver, 
and not unfrequently an intentional deceiver of others. 
I do not say that he is necessarily a scoundrel or a fool. 
He may be very little of either, and he may be a little 



Proper People and Perfect People. 277 

of both. These two words which sound rather roughly, 
will give us, I think, a faithful index to his character. 
A man who is punctiliously proper has usually become 
so in consequence of an attempt to cover up his mental 
deficiencies or his moral obliquities. Punctilious pro- 
priety is always pretentious, and pretentiousness is al- 
ways an attempt at fraud. A shallow mind is very apt 
to clothe itself with propriety as with a garment. A 
brain that cannot handle large things very often under- 
takes to manage a multiplicity of little things, and runs 
naturally into those minute proprieties of life which are 
showy, and which appear to the ignorant to indicate 
great powers and acquisitions in reserve. Most proper 
men are nothing but a shell, although many of them 
pass with the world for more. Their life is all on the 
outside, and is placed and kept there for show. We 
approach them, and very frequently find them so well 
guarded that we do not get a look into their emptiness 
for a long time. We examine them as we would a hill- 
side strewn with fragments and planted with boulders of 
marble. We are obliged to dig to learn whether the 
signs we see are from an out-cropping ledge, or an out- 
side deposit. Sometimes the plunge of a single ques- 
tion will reveal the whole story. A man with large 
brains and a large life in him has something to do be- 
sides attending to the notions of other people. He has 
at least no motive to deceive the world by striving to 
appear to be more than he is. 



278 . Lessons in Life. 

I have said that there are some men who are punc- 
tiliously proper for the purpose of covering their moral 
obliquities. The virtue of a prude is always to be sus- 
pected. " So you have been looking after the bad 
words," was savage old Dr. Johnson's reply to the very 
proper woman who found fault with him for introducing 
so many indecent words into his dictionary. There are 
few men who have not frequently, during their lives, 
broken their way through a crust of punctilious propriety 
into hearts full of all the blackness of sensuality and sin. 
The world is full of hypocrisy, and hypocrisy is nothing 
more than appearing to be what one is not. Indeed, I 
believe that one of the strongest motives operative in 
the world to render men scrupulously proper in their de- 
portment and behavior is sin. I make no hesitation in 
saying that shallowness and sensuality are the leading 
ingredients in the majority of the exceedingly proper 
characters with which I am acquainted. 

Leaving this particular phase of my subject, I wish to 
call attention to the well-recognized fact that all perfect 
people are bores. A perfect character in a novel has 
no more power over a reader — no more foothold among 
his sympathies — than a proposition in mathematics would 
have. Of all stupid creations that the brain of man has 
given birth to, there are none so stupid as the perfect 
men and women whom we find upon the pages of fiction. 
Sometimes we find in actual life a character so sym- 
metrical, so rounded off at the corners, and smoothed 



Proper People and Perfect People. 279 

at the edges, and polished on the sides, and unexcep- 
tionable in all its manifestations, that we cannot find 
fault with it ; yet we find it impossible for us to love it. 
Such a character gets beyond the reach of our sympa- 
thies. Human affection is like ivy. It cannot cling to 
glass ; it must plant its feet in imperfections. It is not 
to be denied that imperfection is the true flavor of hu- 
manity. The mind refuses to sympathize where it does 
not exist. What the world would call a perfect man — 
what would be adjudged a perfect man by the best stan- 
dards — would be as tasteless as a last year's apple. A 
perfect woman could no more be loved than she could 
be hated. I never saw a man with a perfect face — a 
face modelled so symmetrically and so perfectly that no 
fault could be found with it — who was not more or less a 
numskull. A pretty man is always a pretty fool ; and 
the more symmetrical the features of a woman are, the 
more does she approach to the style of beauty and ex- 
pression and native gifts of a porcelain doll. The mind 
and the character can be so symmetrical that they will 
lose all charm and significance. They descend into 
simple prettiness, which is simple insipidity. 

I say that imperfection is the true flavor of humanity. 
In explanation, I ought to say that all individuality is 
either based upon it or pre-supposes it. For instance : the 
preponderance of certain powers and qualities of mind 
and character in me, over certain other powers and quali- 
ties, and the weakness and imperfection of these latter as 



280 Lessons in Life. 

related to the former, and to the individualities of others, 
make my individuality what it is. If in me all mental 
and moral powers were in equipoise — if I were a symmet- 
rical man, as the first Adam may possibly have been— *I 
should have no individuality, no qualities that would 
distinguish me — no weaknesses that would furnish foot- 
holds for human sympathy— no freshness and flavor. A 
whole world full of perfect men and women, each one 
like every other, would be unutterably stupid. Where 
there is no weakness there is no individuality ; where 
there is no individuality there is no true humanity ; 
where there is no true humanity there is no sympathy ; 
and where there is no sympathy there is no pleasure. 
We demand that a man shall live according to his law — 
develop himself according to his law — manifest and ex- 
press himself according to his law ; and then he will 
become the object of our sympathy or antipathy, ac- 
cording to our law. We demand that the true flavor of 
every individuality shall be declared, and not be masked 
by the imposition of conventional regulations. 

If every tree in the world were perfect, according to 
any recognized standard, then all the trees would be 
alike, and would cease to be attractive and picturesque. 
We keep all perfect things out of pictures, because they 
are formal and tasteless. A bran new cottage, with a 
picket fence around it, and every thing cleaned up about 
it, is too perfect to be picturesque. An old, tumble- 
down mill, with rude and rotten timbers, and a wheel 



Proper People and Perfect People. 281 

outside, is decidedly picturesque, because its imperfec- 
tions make it informal. The most unattractive of all 
houses is a model house. A house that no man can find 
fault with, is a house that no man can love. It is pre- 
cisely thus with human character and with men. A 
proper, perfect, "model ".man, is an unlovable man. 
A sphere cannot be made to fit an angle, and a spherical 
character has no point of sympathy with one that is 
thrown into the angles necessary for individuality. So 
we neither love symmetry and perfection in men, ac- 
cording to any recognized standard, nor the appearance 
of them. We demand not only that men shall have in- 
dividuality, but that they shall express it in their lan- 
guage and their lives. In society we demand variety ; 
and in order to have it, men must act out themselves. 
The harmony and sweetness of social life consist in the 
adjustment of the strong points of some to the weak 
points of others. 

With these facts so very evident as they must be to 
all thoughtful minds, it is strange that such an effort is 
made to bring all men to a certain standard and style 
of life. I do not believe there is a country on the face 
of the earth where public opinion and fashion and con- 
ventional and individual notions, exercise so despotic a 
sway as they do in America. There is, in this "free 
country," no play to individuality tolerated. No room 
is made for the peculiarities of a man — no freedom is 
given to his mode of manifestation. A man who has 



282 Lessons hi Life, 

peculiar manners, and whose style of individuality is 
marked, has no room allowed to him at all. He is very 
likely to be called a fool, and laughed at by his inferiors. 
We take no pains to look through the outside to find the 
heart and soul, and refuse to see excellence behind 
manifestations that offend our notions or our tastes. 
We go to hear a preacher, and if he do not happen to 
have the externals, and the style of delivery which we 
most admire, we condemn him at once. We make no 
room for his individuality, and allow to it no freedom of 
manifestation. Room and freedom — that which the 
ocean has, that which the rivers have, that which the 
forest has, and that from which all of them derive their 
beauty and their glory — room and freedom are denied 
to men by men who need both, quite as much as their 
fellows. 

The choicest food of the gossips is the personal pecu- 
liarities of their acquaintances. The grand staple of 
ridicule is this same individuality, whose importance I 
have endeavored to illustrate. All the small wits of so- 
ciety busy themselves upon the eccentricities of those 
around them. Church and creed, party and platform, 
fashion and custom, all direct themselves against the 
development of individuality. Sensitive natures shrink 
before such an array of influences, and retire into them- 
selves, drawing back and keeping in check all their 
out-reaching individuality. Many a man, indeed, who 
would face a cannon's mouth without trembling, flinches 



Proper People and Perfect People. 283 

when beset by ridicule. It is not the fault of society 
that the whole race of mankind are not reduced to a 
dead level of character, and a tasteless uniformity of 
life. Were it not that God does His work so strongly, 
it would have been undone long ago. As it is, we 
always have a few men and women who are true enough 
to God and themselves to keep the world from stagna- 
tion, and give zest to life. They sometimes shock Miss 
Nancy, but as they do not happen to care what Miss 
Nancy thinks of them, they manage to live and do some- 
thing to keep Miss Nancy's friends from settling into 
chronic inanity. 



LESSON XXII. 

THE POETIC TEST. 

ct I walked on, musing with myself 
On life and art, and whether, after all, 
A larger metaphysics might not help 
Our physics — a completer poetry 
Adjust our daily life and vulgar wants 
More fully than the special outside plans, 
Phalansteries, material institutes, 
The civil conscriptions and lay monasteries, 
Preferred by modern thinkers." 

— Mrs. Browning. 

THE highest poetry is the purest truth. To learn 
whether any thing is as it ought to be, we have 
only to learn whether it is truly poetical. It is a popular 
fallacy to suppose that poetical things are necessarily 
fanciful, or imaginative, or sentimental — in other words, 
that poetry resides in that which is both baseless and 
valueless. In the popular thought, poetry is shut out of 
the realm of truth and reality. The reason, I suppose, 
is, that poetry demands more of truth and harmony and 
beauty than is commonly found in the actualities of 
human life. 



The Poetic Test. 285 

Let us suppose that in a country journey we arrive at 
the summit of a hill, at whose foot lies a charming vil- 
lage imbosomed in trees, from the midst of which rises 
the white spire of the village church. If we are in a 
poetical mood, we say : " How beautiful is this retire- 
ment ! This quiet retreat, away from the world's dis- 
tractions and great temptations, must be the abode of 
domestic and social virtue — the home of contentment, of 
peace, and of an unquestioning Christian faith. Fortu- 
nate are they whose lot it is to be born and to pass their 
days here, and to be buried at last in the little graveyard 
behind the church." As we see the children playing 
upon the grass, and the tidy matrons sitting in their 
doorways, and the farmers at work in the fields, and the 
quiet inn, with its brooding piazzas like wings waiting for 
the shelter of its guests, the scene fills us with a rare 
poetic delight. In the midst of our little rapture, how- 
ever, a communicative villager comes along, and we 
question him. We are shocked to learn that the inn is 
a very bad place, with a drunken landlord, that there is 
a quarrel in the church which is about to drive the old 
pastor away, that there is not a man in the village who 
would not leave if he could sell his property, that the 
women give a free rein to their propensity for scandal, 
and that half of the children of the place are down with 
the measles. 

The true poet sees things not always as they are, but 
as they ought to be. He insists upon congruity and con- 



286 Lessons in Life. 

sistency. Such a life should be in such a spot, under 
such circumstances ; and no unwarped and unpolluted 
mind can fail to see that the poet's ideal is the embodi- 
ment of God's will. The poet's Indian is very different 
from the real native American who has been exposed to 
the corrupting influences of the white man's civilization. 
The poet insists on seeing in the American Indian a 
noble manhood, simple tastes, freedom from all conven- 
tionality, heroic fortitude, and all those romantic quali- 
ties which a free forest life seems so well calculated to 
engender. He looks upon the deep, mysterious woods, 
traversed by nameless streams ; the majestic mountains, 
haunted by shadows ; the broad lakes, swept only by the 
wind and the wild man's oar, and he says : u it is fitting, 
and only fitting, that out of such a realm should come 
such a life." Which is the better and the more truthful 
Indian — that of the poet, or he who drank the rum of 
our fathers and then scalped them ? The poet's village 
is the model village, and the poet's Indian is the model 
Indian. Both are built of the best and truest materials 
that God furnishes, and we see that when the actual 
village and the real Indian are tried by the poetic stand- 
ard, they are tried by the severest standard that can be 
applied to them. The poet's ideal embodies God's ideal 
of a village and an Indian. 

The grand, basilar idea of American institutions is 
human equality — the idea embodied in the American 
Declaration of Independence, that men are created free 



The Poetic Test. 287 

and equal, each with an independent, and all with a 
co-ordinate, right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of 
happiness. There is in this idea the highest poetry, 
because it is the transcendent truth ; and there is no 
true poetry this side of the highest truth. Poetry follows 
the universal law, and is dependent for its quality up- 
on its materials. In the degree in which its materials 
are fictitious and artificial, is it poor and false. The 
Pilgrim's Progress is essentially better poetry than the 
Paradise Lost, because it contains more of the truth as 
it is in the divine life of man. 

The poetic test, then, is practically a very valuable 
one, in all the important matters that relate to our life. 
Much of that which is miscalled poetry has been based 
upon arbitrary and artificial distinctions in human society 
and human lot. The poet has often sung of thrones 
and palaces, of kings and queens, of men and women 
of gentle blood, of barons and knights and squires, of 
retainers and dependents, of patricians and plebeians, 
and thus drawn his grand interest from distinctions 
in which God and Nature have had no hand. There 
may be romance, fancy, imagination, sentiment, and 
even instruction in such compositions as these, but 
there is no poetry. They have not in them the immor- 
tal life and the motive power of truth. We have only 
to carry distinctions thus attempted to be glorified to 
their logical results to land in the slavery of the masses 
to the over-mastering few. Now there never was, and 



288 Lessons in Life. 

there never can be, any poetry in slavery. Since time 
began no true poet has undertaken to write a line in 
praise of slavery. Poets have always been, and they 
must necessarily forever be, the prophets and priests of 
freedom. Multitudes of men have undertaken to justify 
slavery by the Bible, by expediency, by history, by 
necessity, by philosophy, by the constitution of the coun- 
try ; but no man ever undertook to justify it by poetry. 
The most brilliant prize offered by a national committee 
for the best poem in praise of human slavery, would not 
be able to draw forth a single stanza from any man 
capable of writing a line of true poetry. Philosophical 
defences of slavery can be purchased, political justifica- 
tions can be had at the small price of a small office, and 
Christian apologies to order, but, thank God ! not one 
line in praise of slavery could be written by a true poet, 
if the wealth of the world were to be his reward. 

We have in the present age a sickly, sentimental 
humanity which is busily endeavoring to pervert the 
sense and love of justice in mankind. It regards the 
disposition to do wrong as a disease, to be treated with 
appropriate emollients applied over the heart, or some 
gentle opiate or alterative taken through the ears. It 
pities the murderer, and aims to give the impression 
to him and to the world that he is a victim to the bar- 
barous instincts of society in the degree by which his 
punishment is made severe. It aims to transform prisons 
into comfortable asylums, where those who have been so 



The Poetic Test. 289 

unfortunate as to burn somebody's house, or steal some- 
body's horse, or insert a dirk under somebody's waist- 
coat, may retire and repent of their little follies, and in 
the meantime get better food and lodging than they were 
ever able to steal. Punishment — retribution — these are 
words which make them shudder. Nothing in their view 
is proper but such treatment of the criminal, be it soft 
or severe, as will contribute to his reformation. The 
criminal has fprfeited no rights, and society has no 
claims upon him, if he only repents ; and all punishment 
inflicted beyond the measure necessary to secure repent- 
ance is cruel. We have a great deal of this ; and more 
or less it is modifying theological systems and vitiating 
public policy. It is carried to such an extent, often, as 
to make of the greatest criminals notable martyrs. 
Society and the victim of wrong-doing are both forgotten 
in sympathy for the wrong- doer. 

Now these sentimental sympathizers with criminals, 
call themselves Christians, and are not willing to be- 
lieve that any man can, in a truly Christian spirit, 
oppose their theories and their influence. They have 
been able to blind almost every sense in a man except 
the poetic sense ; but to this they appeal in vain. 
"Poetic justice" maintains its purity. The reader of 
a novel, no matter how good or how bad he may be, 
demands that the villain of the book shall be punished, 
as a matter of justice alike to him and to those who 
have been his victims. Nothing but justice — nothing 
13 



290 Lessons in Life. 

but a fitting retribution — will satisfy. The poetic in- 
stinct demands a perfect system of rewards and punish- 
ments, and is as little satisfied when a hero succeeds 
indifferently, as when a scoundrel fails to be punished 
according to his deserts. There is no poetic fitness 
without justice — retribution, pound for pound, and 
measure for measure. Set any audience that can be 
gathered to watching a play in which criminal and 
crafty art is made to meet and master a guileless 
spirit and pollute a spotless womanhood, and the sym- 
pathies of the vilest will follow the victim, and, in the 
end, demand the punishment of the victor. Nothing 
will seem to any audience so entirely out of place as 
kind and gentle treatment toward the artful brute, and 
nothing more outrageously unjust than the idea that 
repentance is the principal end of his punishment. The 
poetic instinct of fitness once thoroughly roused, as it 
is in a story, a poem, or a play, will be satisfied with 
nothing but full suffering for every sin. Now I would 
trust this poetic instinct of fitness further than I would 
all the sympathies of the humanitarians, all the sophis- 
tries of the philosophers, all the subtleties of the theo- 
logians, and all the milder virtues of Christianity itself. 
To me, it is as authoritative as a direct revelation from 
God, and is equivalent to it. 

Again nothing is more apparent in American char- 
acter and American life than a growing lack of rever- 
ence. It begins in the family, and runs out through 



The Poetic Test. 291 

all the relations of society. The parent may be loved, 
but he is much less revered than in the olden time. 
Parental authority is cast off early, and age and gray 
hairs do not command that tender regard and that 
careful respect that they did in the times of the fathers. 
In politics, it is the habit to speak in light and disre- 
spectful terms of those whose experience gives them 
the right to counsel and command. Young men talk 
flippantly of "fossils," and "old fogies," and wonder 
why men who have been buried once will not remain 
quietly in their graves. Of course when such a spirit 
as this prevails, there can be no reverence for authority, 
no respect for place and position, and no genuine and 
hearty loyalty. We nickname our Presidents ; and 
" old Buck" and " old Abe" are spoken of as familiarly 
as if they were a pair of old oxen we were in the habit of 
driving. Every man considers himself good enough for 
any place, and great enough to judge every other man. 
If a pastor does not happen to suit a parishioner, the 
parishioner has no feeling of reverence for him that 
would hinder him from telling him so to his face. 
Every man considers himself not only as good and as 
great as any other man, but a little better and a little 
greater. No being but God is revered, and He, I fear, 
not overmuch. What we call " Young America " is made 
up of about equal parts of irreverence, conceit, and that 
popular moral quality familiarly known as " brass." 
It is the habit to applaud Young America — to 



292 Lessons in Life. 

magnify the superior wisdom and efficiency of young 
men, to treat old age familiarly, and to compel those 
of superior years to ignore the honors with which God 
has crowned them. " Every dog has his day," we say, 
and we are impatient of a man who declines to step 
into retirement the moment that his hair turns gray, 
to make room for some specimen of Young America 
with a snub nose and a smart shirt-collar. Now, how- 
ever this irreverence may be justified — and it is not 
only justified but shamelessly gloried in — it is not 
poetical. Poetry cannot be woven of improprieties. 
A people bowing with reverence to those in authority, 
and regarding with profound respect high official sta- 
tion ; a family of children clinging, even through a long 
manhood and womanhood, around the form of an aged 
parent with assiduous attentions and tender reverence ; 
a community or a nation of young men looking to age 
for wisdom and for counsel ; universal respect for years 
on the part of the young — these are, and must forever 
remain, poetical. Out of reverence can be woven the 
most beautiful pictures which the poet's brain can con- 
ceive ; but Young America can no more excite poetic 
sentiment, or inspire poetic imaginations, than the sham 
Havana it smokes, or the mongrel horse it drives. 
There is no poetry in an irreverent character, or in an 
irreverent community. Irreverence in any form will 
not stand the poetic test. 

Americans boast habitually of their country, and their 



The Poetic Test. 293 

boastings always assume the poetic form. The ballot- 
box that they talk about, is the ballot-box that ought to 
be and not the ballot-box that is. One would think, to 
hear what is said of the ballot-box, that it literally shines 
with glory, so that every American freeman who marches 
up to it to deposit the paper embodiment of his will, 
glows like a god in its light, and grows godlike by his 
act. If we are to believe Mr. Whittier, the poor voter 
sings on election day : 

" The proudest now is but my peer, 
The highest not more high ; 
To-day, of all the weary year, 
A king of men am I. 

11 To-day, alike are great and small, 
The nameless and the known ; 
My palace is the people's hall, 
The ballot-box my throne! " 

This is a very splendid sort of ballot-box, and he is a 
very fine sort of an American who sings about it ; but 
what are the facts ? There are a good many chances 
that the box stands in a corner grocery, and that the 
poor voter is led up to deposit his priceless ballot so 
drunk that he cannot walk without help. Mr. Whittier 
would have us believe that the poor voter sings : 

" To-day shall simple manhood try 
The strength of gold and land ; 
The wide world has not wealth to buy 
The power in my right hand." 



294 Lessons in Life. 

The truth is that gold and land try the very " simple 
manhood " as a rule, and very much less than the wide 
world is sufficient to buy the power in a great multitude 
of poor voters' hands. The poet sees what the ballot- 
box may be, ought to be, and, in some rare instances, 
really is. He unerringly seizes upon the dignity and 
majesty of self-government, the equal rights and privi- 
leges of manhood, and the dissipation of all distinctions 
in the exercise of the political franchise among freemen. 
The great truth of human equality inspires him, and he > 
uses the ideal and possible ballot-box to illustrate it, 
and thus furnishes the standard by which the real ballot- 
box is to be judged. 

The poetical view of our American system of govern- 
ment is that all men have a voice in the government ; 
that we choose our own rulers and make our own laws ; 
that no man has a hereditary right to rule, and that men 
are selected for the service of the people, in the con- 
struction and the execution of the laws, because of their 
fitness for office. Outside of this view, the American 
system of government has no beauty and no foundation 
in truth and justice. If we undertake to argue with a 
monarchist, we never bring forward any other. It has 
in it the essential element of poetry, because it does jus- 
tice to the nature and character of man, and describes a 
perfect political society. The poetical view of the 
American system of government, is, then, the highest 
view. It covers the sovereignty of the citizen, and the 



The Poetic Test, 295 

wisdom of the popular voice. Around this idea the 
poets have woven their noblest songs ; but again we ask 
what are the facts ? The people are led by the nose by- 
politicians ; and not one officer of the Government in 
one hundred is chosen to his place because of his fitness 
for it. The people do not nominate those who rule 
them, or those who shall make laws for them. Those 
whom the politicians do not nominate for office, nomi- 
nate themselves. The political machinery of America 
practically takes the choice of rulers and officers out of 
the hands of the people, and puts it into the hands of a 
set of self-appointed leaders, whose patriotism is parti- 
sanship, and whose principal aim is to serve themselves 
and their friends, and use the people for accomplishing 
their purposes. No greater fiction was ever conceived 
than the pleasant one that the people of America govern 
America. The people of America, except in certain 
political revolutions, have always been governed by a 
company of self-appointed and irresponsible men, whose 
principal work was to grind axes for themselves. The 
poetry of American politics is then the severest standard 
by which to judge the reality of American politics. 

Religious freedom is another poetical idea in which 
the American glories. It is essentially a poetical thought 
that every man is free to worship God according to the 
dictates of his own conscience — that there is no Church 
to domineer over the State, and no State to domineer 
over the Church, that the Bible is free, and that each 



296 Lessons in Life. 

individual soul is responsible only to its Maker. This 
great and beautiful liberty stirs us when we think of it 
as music would stir us, breathed from heaven itself. It 
is grand, God-begotten, belonging in the eternal system 
of things, full of inspiration. This religious freedom we 
claim as Americans. Some of us enjoy it ; but the 
number is not large. The freedom of the sect is not 
greatly circumscribed, but the freedom of the individual 
is hardly greater in America than it is in those countries 
where an established church lays its finger upon every 
man. I would as soon be the slave of the Pope or the 
Archbishop as the slave of a sect. I would as readily 
put my neck under the yoke of a national church as 
under the yoke of a sect. It does not mend the matter 
that the multitude are willing slaves, and it certainly 
mars the matter that the sects themselves do what they 
can, in too many instances, to circumscribe each the 
other's liberty. Sects are religiously and socially pro- 
scribed by sects. Take any town in America that con- 
tains half a dozen churches, representing the same num- 
ber of religious denominations, and it will be found that, 
with one, and that probably the dominant sect, it will 
be all that a man's reputation and position are worth to 
belong to another sect. Perfect religious freedom in 
America there undoubtedly is ; but it is the possession 
of only here and there an individual. Prevalent un- 
charitableness and bigotry are incompatible with the ex- 
istence of religious liberty anywhere. 



The Poetic Test. 297 

It is thus that the poetic instinct grasps at truth and 
beauty, and fitness and harmony, wherever it sees it, 
and it is thus that it furnishes us (subordinate only to 
special, divine revelation) with the most delicate tests of 
human institutions, customs, and actions. Litmus-paper 
does not more faithfully detect the presence of an acid 
than the poetic instinct detects the false and foul in all 
( that makes up human life. All that is grand and good, 
all that is heroic and unselfish, all that is pure and true, 
all that is firm and strong, all that is beautiful and har- 
monious, is essentially poetical, and the opposite of all 
these is at once rejected by the unsophisticated poetic 
instinct. 

Verily the poets of the world are the prophets of hu- 
manity ! They forever reach after and foresee the ulti- 
mate good. They are evermore building the paradise 
that is to be, painting the millennium that is to come, 
restoring the lost image of God in the human soul. 
When the world shall reach the poet's ideal, it will arrive 
at perfection ; and much good will it do the world to 
measure itself by this ideal, and struggle to lift the real 
to its lofty level. 
13* 



LESSON XXIII. 

THE FOOD OF LIFE. 

"To the soul time doth perfection give, 

And adds fresh lustre to her beauty still ; 
And makes her in eternal youth to live 

Like her which nectar to the gods doth fill. 
The more she lives the more she feeds on truth. 

The more she feeds, the strength doth more increase ; 
And what is strength, but an effect in youth 
Which, if time nurse, how can it ever cease ? " 

—Sir J. Davies. 

AHORSE can live, and do a good deal of dull work, 
on hay ; but spirit and speed require grain. 
There is no self-supplied, perennial fountain within the 
animal that enables him to expend more in the way of 
muscular power than he receives in the way of muscular 
stimulus and nourishment Food, in its quality and 
amount, up to the limit of healthful digestion, is set over 
against, and exactly measures, under ordinary circum- 
stances, the quality and amount of labor of which a horse 
is capable. So, a cow can live on straw and corn-stalks ; 
but it would not be reasonable to suppose that she would 



The Food of Life. 299 

give any considerable amount of milk upon so slender a 
diet. We do not expect rich milk, in large quantities, 
to be yielded by a cow that is not bountifully fed with 
the most nutritious food. The same fact attaches to 
land. We cannot get out of land more than there is in 
it ; and having once exhausted it, we are obliged to 
put into it, in fertilizers, all we wish to take from it in 
the form of vegetable growths. Wherever there is an 
outgo, there must be an equal income, or exhaustion 
will be the inevitable consequence. 

The principle which these familiar facts so forcibly 
illustrate, is a very important one in its connection with 
human life. We cannot get any more out of human 
life than we put into it. All civilization is an illustration 
of what can be accomplished by feeding the human mind. 
All barbaric and savage life is an illustration of mental 
and moral starvation. The differences among mankind 
are the results of differences in the nourishment upon 
which their minds are fed. Eunice Williams, who was 
taken captive by the savages of Canada a. hundred and 
fifty years ago, was the daughter of a most godly minis- 
ter, of the old Puritan stamp ; but a very few years of 
savage feeding made her a savage. Her mind was cut 
off from all other varieties of nourishment, and could 
only tend to savage issues. She kept a knowledge of 
her history, and many years after her capture revisited 
her home, accompanied by her tawny husband ; but no 
persuasions could call her from her savage life and com- 



300 Lessons in Life. 

panionship. The conversion of men from heathenism to 
Christianity and Christian civilization is accomplished by 
introducing new food into their moral and mental diet. 
" A change of pastures makes fat calves," we are told ; 
and any one who has noticed the effect upon an active 
mind of its translation from one variety of social and 
moral influences to another, will recognize the truth of 
the proverb. 

If a man will call up his acquaintances, one by one, 
and mentally measure the results of their lives, he will 
be astonished to see how small those results are. He 
will also see that they are, under ordinary circum- 
stances, in the exact proportion to the amount, and in 
correspondence with the variety, of the food they take 
in. It is astonishing to see how little it takes to keep 
some people, and how very little such people become 
on their diet. A man who shuts himself away from all 
social life, and lays by his reading, and declines all food 
that addresses itself to his sensational and emotional 
nature, and refuses that bread of life which comes down 
from heaven, and feeds himself only with relation to the 
accomplishment of some petty work, will become as thin 
and scrawny, mentally and morally, as the body of a 
half-starved Hottentot. It is the one curse of rural life 
that it does not have a sufficiency and a sufficient variety 
of food. The same scenes, the same faces, the same 
limited range of b*ooks, the same dull friends, exhausted 
long ago — no new nourishment for powers cloyed with 



The Food of Life. 301 

their never-varying food — these are what make rural 
life, as it is usually lived, unattractive and most unfruit- 
ful. The fruits — the issues — of this life cannot be 
greater than the food it gets, and the food is very scanty. 
It is not necessary that it should be so, and sometimes 
it is not so ; but the rule of common rural life is insuffi- 
ciency of mental food, and consequent poverty of mani- 
festation. 

The utilitarian habits of New England, originating in 
necessity, and far outliving the circumstances in which 
they had their birth, have tended more than any other 
cause to make New England character unlovable. The 
saving of half-pence to add to one's store, and the denial 
to one's self and children of that which will delight the 
famished senses, and stir the thin emotions, and enlarge 
the range of experience, is the direct way of arriving at 
meanness of life. There are those who will not permit 
their families to cultivate flowers, because flowers are not 
useful, and they involve a waste of time and land. They 
will not have an instrument of music in their houses, 
because music is not useful, and it involves an expendi- 
ture of money, and the throwing away of a great deal of 
time. They will not buy pictures, because pictures are 
not useful, and because they cost money ; so that many 
a rich man's parlor is as bare of ornament as a tomb 
would be. They will not attend a lecture, because, 
though it might furnish them with mental food for a 
month, it would not bring their shillings back to them. 



302 Lessons in Life. 

They will not attend a concert, because a concert is not 
useful. They will not hire a minister who possesses fine 
gifts — gifts that would enrich them mentally, morally, and 
socially — because they cannot afford it. So they take 
up with ministerial dry nursing, and one another's dry 
experiences, as spiritual food, in order to save a few 
more dollars. 

There are a few of the severer virtues that will live 
upon a diet of this kind. Endurance, industry, a nega- 
tive purity, thrift, integrity — these can live, and do live, 
after a sort, on a plain and scanty diet, and these, as 
we know, abound in New England. But generosity, 
hospitality, charity, liberality — all those qualities that 
'enrich the character, and all those virtues that enlarge 
it and give it fulness and beauty and attractiveness, are 
always wanting among the class that sacrifices every 
thing for use. More cannot be got out of any life than 
is put into it. Modern chemistry analyzes soils, and 
ascertains exactly what they need to make them pro- 
duce bountifully of any kind of grains and fruits. 
Wheat cannot be grown on land that does not contain 
the constituents of wheat ; and if it be desirable to 
grow wheat, those constituents must be added to the 
soil. If any mental soil does not produce those vital 
manifestations and results which characterize a large, 
rich, and attractive life, then the constituents of that 
life must be introduced as nutriment. 

One of the common experiences in the world of 



The Food of Life. 303 

authorship is the writing of a single successful book, 
and the failure of all that follow it from the same pen. 
The explanation is, that the first book is the result of a 
life of feeding, and those that follow it come from an 
exhausted mind. There are many writers who, as soon 
as they begin to 'write, stop feeding, and in a very 
short time write themselves out. The temptation of 
the writer is to seclusion. His labors in a measure 
unfit him for social life, and for mingling in the every- 
day affairs of men. He is apt to become warped in his 
sentiments, and morbid in his feelings, and to grow 
small and. weak as his works increase. The greatest 
possible blessing to an author is compulsory contact 
with the world — every-day necessity to meet and mingle 
with men and women — social responsibilities and busi- 
ness cares, and the consequent necessity of keeping up 
with the events and the literature of his time. An 
author in this position not only keeps a healthy mind, 
but he takes in food every day which his individuality 
assimilates to itself, and utters as the expression of its 
life. I have no belief that Shakspeare would ever have 
given us his immortal plays, but for the necessities 
which brought him so much into contact with men. 
Outside of his authorship, he lived an active, practical 
life — trod the boards of a theatre, managed men, looked 
after his money, rubbed against society in multiplied 
ways — and kept himself strong, healthy, and abundantly 
fed with that food which was necessary to him. 



304 Lessons in Life. 

Shakspeare had genius, it is true, but genius without 
food is quite as helpless as a barren acre. All great 
geniuses are immense feeders. All true and healthy 
geniuses fasten for food upon every thing and every 
body. Their antennae are always out for the apprehen- 
sion of ideas, and their mouths always open for their 
reception. Walter Scott was engaged ii\ the active 
duties of the legal profession when writing his novels, 
and there was not a legend of Scotland, nor a bit of 
history or gossip, nor an old story-teller that lived 
within fifty miles of him, that he did not lay under 
tribute for mental food. It is declared, to the everlast- 
ing disgrace of Goethe, that he practised upon the affec- 
tions of women, even to old age, that he might gather 
food for poetry. Byron traversed Europe in search of 
adventure, and rummaged the scenes of legend and 
story for food for his voracious senses and sensibilities. 
His Childe Harold is nothing but the record of his tire- 
less foraging. All men who have produced much have 
fed bountifully. 

The writers are few in whom we do not notice 
something painfully wanting. We do not always un- 
derstand what it is, but we know that, while we may 
accord to them good sense, and even genius, they fail to 
satisfy us. There is some good thing which they lack — 
something unbalanced and partial and one-sided about 
them. We presume that this is often the result of a 
constitutional defect, but in most instances it is attribu- 



The Food of Life. 305 

table to insufficient nourishment in some department 
of their nature. " All but," is the appropriate epitaph 
for the tombstone of many an author ; and if we look 
cirefully into his history we shall find an answer to the 
question : "All but what?" We shall find, perhaps, 
that he is a recluse, that his social nature is not fed at 
all, and that he is, of course, unsympathetic. This is 
a very frequent cause of dissatisfaction with an author, 
as it always gives a morbid tinge to his writings. 
Dickens was eminently a social man, and eminently 
healthy and sympathetic. Possibly an author may 
starve his senses and become purely reflective, yield- 
ing up his points of contact with the outside world, 
and shutting the channels by which the qualities of 
things find their way to his mind. Not unfrequently 
a man's domestic affections may be starved, or ill fed, 
and if so, the fact is sure to be betrayed in his writings. 
And if a writer's religious nature be starved, it inva- 
riably vitiates all his characteristic works. No man 
who shuts out God and heaven from his life can write 
without betraying the poverty of his diet. If an au- 
thor would write satisfactorily, touching all kinds of 
human nature and all sides of human nature, he must 
feed every department of his own nature, for he has 
nothing to give that he does not receive. 

As in animal, so in mental life, there are gormand- 
izing and gluttony, tending always to paralysis of 
voluntary effort. The devouring of facts, as they are 



306 Lessons in Life. 

found both in nature and in books, indulgence in social 
pleasures immoderately and constantly, pietism that 
feeds exclusively upon the things of religion, the feast- 
ing of the imagination upon the creations of fiction — 
all these are debilitating ; and a blessed thing to the 
world is it that they unfit the mind for writing at all, 
as the overfeeding of the body unfits its organs for 
labor. Plethoric minds do not trouble the world with 
books, or with conversation, or with preaching. Activ- 
ity simply demands food enough, and in sufficient 
variety, to feed its powers while operative, from day 
to day. This is the reason why immensely learned men 
have rarely done much for the world. Many of them 
have won reputations, like remarkably fat steers-, for 
breadth of back and depth of brisket, but they are 
never known to move more than their own enormous 
bulks. Beyond a certain point of mental feeding, over 
and above the necessities of labor, the mind gets sleepy 
and clumsy. 

I have alluded to authors, particularly, because, 
unlike the world in general, they give form and record 
to their life. The masses of men live as authors live, 
but their lives are not put down in books, so that the 
public may read and measure them. We will suppose 
that two men are fed upon the same diet. Each shall 
have sufficient food for his religious, social, aesthetic, 
domestic, sensational, and emotional natures, yet only 
one of them shall embody in books the life which he 



The Food of Life. 307 

draws from these varieties of nourishment. The other 
lives essentially the same life, but it fails of record. It 
may be as rich and characteristic, in every particular, 
as that of the author, but it fails of artistic form be- 
cause, perhaps, he lacks the peculiar mental gift re- 
quired for its construction. So the real life of the 
author and the life of his reader may be the same, 
the one having advantage over the other in no particu- 
lar, and the fact that one is embodied in artistic forms 
conferring upon it no essential excellence. What I 
have said about authors, therefore, applies to all man- 
kind, engaged in whatever calling or profession. If 
any portion of any man's nature be not well fed, he will 
betray the fact in his life. Poverty of food in any 
particular will surely bring poverty of manifestation 
in that department of life which is deprived of its 
natural nourishment. 

A familiar illustration of the failure of a life to secure 
its appropriate food, will be found in men and women 
who live unmarried. An old bachelor will sooner or 
later betray the fact that his finer affections are starved. 
It is next to impossible for him to hide from the world 
the wrong to which he is subjecting himself. His char- 
acter will invariably show that it is warped and weak 
and lame, and his life will be barren of all those mani- 
festations which flow from domestic affections abun- 
dantly fed. Here and there, one like Washington Irving 
will nourish a love transplanted to Heaven, and bring 



308 Lessons in* Life. 

around him the sweet faces and delicate natures of wo- 
men, to minister to a thirsting* heart, and preserve, as 
he did, his geniality and tenderness to the last ; but 
such as he are comparatively few. An old bachelor, 
voluntarily single, always betrays a nature badly fed in 
one of its important departments. So, too, those who 
marry, but who are not blest with children, betray the 
lack of food. Many of these hunger through life for 
children to feed their affections, and take on peculiari- 
ties that betray the fact that something is wrong with 
them. Some adopt children in order to supply a want 
which seems imperative, and others take pets of differ- 
ent kinds to their bosoms, ranging through the scale 
from birds to bull-dogs. It is a familiar trick of starved 
faculties and affections to take on a morbid appetite, 
and feed themselves on the strangest of supplies. 

So, if a man would live a full and generous life, he 
must supply it with a full and generous diet. So far as 
his ability will go, he should make his home the embodi- 
ment of his best taste. There should be abundant 
meaning in its architecture. There should be pictures 
upon its walls, and books upon its shelves and tables. 
All th6 domestic and social affections should be abun- 
dantly fed there. His table should be a gathering place 
for friends. Music should minister to him. He should 
bring himself into contact with the great and wise and 
good, who have embalmed their lives in the varied 
forms of art. The facts that live in the earth under his 



The Food of Life. 309 

feet, the beauty that spreads itself around him, and all 
those truths which appeal to his religious nature, are 
food which should minister to his life. An irreligious 
man — no matter what his genius may be — is always a 
starveling. An unsocial man can by no possibility lead 
a true life. A man's nature should be thrown wide 
open at every point, to drink in the nourishment that 
comes from the healthy sources of supply ; and thus 
only may his life become abundantly rich and beautiful. 
I repeat the proposition that I started with : we cannot 
get more out of human life than we put into it. 

There is another aspect of this subject that I have 
barely space to allude to. The illustration with which 
this article opens, touching the effects of hay and grain 
respectively upon the life of the horse, suggests that the 
food with which our bodies are nourished may have an 
important bearing upon our mental and moral life. Of 
this I have no doubt. Coarse food, made of material 
but feebly vitalized, makes coarse men and women. 
Muscular tissues not formed from choice material, 
brains built of poor stuff, nervous fibres to which the 
finest and most delicate food has not ministered, are 
not the instruments of the highest grade of mental life. 
The dispensation of sawdust is passed away. It is pretty 
well understood that the most complicated, the noblest, 
and the finest creature in the world requires the best 
food the world can produce ; and that he requires it in 
great variety. If a man leads simply an animal life — 



310 Lessons in Life. 

eating, working, and sleeping — let him feed as animals 
do ; but if he lives above animals, as a social and relig- 
ious being, then let him take food that gives pleasure to 
his palate, and pluck and power to all the instruments 
of his mind. Hay may answer very well for a mind that 
moves at the rate of only three miles an hour ; but a 
mile was never yet made " inside of 2 : 40 " without 
grain. 



LESSON XXIV. 

HALF-FINISHED WORK. 

<+- 

"Ah God ! well, art is long ! 

And life is short and fleeting. 

What headaches have I felt and what heart-beating, 

When critical desire was strong. 

How hard it is the ways and means to master 

By which one gains each fountain head ! 

And ere one yet has half the journey sped 

The poor fool dies — O sad disaster ! " 

— Brooks' Translation of Faust. 

MANKIND are " nothing, if not critical ; " and noth- 
ing would seem to be criticism with them but 
fault-finding. It is astonishing to see what a number 
of architects there are in the world — how many people 
there are who feel competent to give an opinion upon 
buildings in course of erection on the public streets. 
If a dwelling is going up, there is not a day of its prog- 
ress in which its builder or architect is not convicted of 
being a fool, by any number of wise people who judge 
him on the evidence of a half-finished structure. When 
the dwelling is completed, it usually " looks better than 



312 Lessons in Life. 

they ever supposed it could ; " but they learn nothing 
from this, though the proverb that " only fools criticise 
half-finished work" is a good deal older than they are. 
Every man who builds is obliged to take this running 
fire of fault-finding. Passing a new church recently, in 
the company of an architect, I asked him what he 
thought of the building. " I can tell better when the 
staging is down," was his reply. He knew enough not 
to criticise half-finished work, while probably a hundred 
men, knowing nothing of architecture whatever, had, 
during that very day, freely given their opinion of the 
building in the most unqualified way. 

Did it ever occur to the reader of this essay that 
nearly all the judgments that are made up and ex- 
pressed in this world relate to half- finished work ? We 
hear a great deal of criticism indulged in with regard to 
American society. I have no doubt that this criticism 
is just, in a certain sense, but American society is only 
a half-finished structure. If it had arrived at the end 
of improvement and growth; if the elements which 
enter it had already organized themselves in their high- 
est form ; if the creation of a high, refined, and beauti- 
ful society were not a thing of time ; if such a society 
did not depend upon the operation of forces that require 
a great range of influences and circumstances, then the 
criticism might be entirely just ; but it is as unreason- 
able to expect a high grade of social life in America, at 
this point of American history, as it is to expect perfec- 



Half-Finished Work. 313 

tion in a church before the carpenters get out of it, and 
the staging is down. Wealth, learning, culture, leisure 
— these cannot be so combined in this country yet as to 
give us the highest grade and style of social life. We 
are all at work upon the structure, and unless American 
ideas are incurably bad, and we are faithless to our 
duties, American society will be good when the work 
upon it is completed. No society is to be condemned 
so long as it is progressive toward a goodly complete- 
ness. 

Men and women are always judging one another be- 
fore they are finished. A raw boy, with only the unde- 
veloped elements of manhood in him, is denounced as a 
dunce. A light-hearted, sportive girl, with an incon- 
tinent overflow of spirits, is condemned as a hoiden. 
Neither boy nor girl is half made. There is only the 
frame -work of the man and woman up, and it does not 
appear what they are to become. A young man is wild, 
and judged accordingly. It is not remembered that 
there are various modifying influences to be brought to 
bear upon him, before he will be a man. We see the 
bold outline of a new house, and we say that it is not 
beautiful. Soon, however, a piazza is built here, and a 
dormer is pushed out there, and gracefully modelled 
chimneys pierce the roof, and cornice and verandah and } 
tower are added, until the structure stands before us 
complete in beauty, convenience, and strength. When 
we condemn a young man w r e do not stop to think that 
14 



3 H Lessons in Life. 

he is not done — that there is a wife to place upon one 
side of him, and children to be grouped upon the other, 
and sundry relations to be adjusted before we can tell 
any thing about him at all. 

There is nothing more common in experience and 
observation than the partiality felt by young and un- 
married men for the society of married women, and the 
love of unmarried young women for the society of 
married men. I suppose that nearly every young man 
and young woman has a time of feeling that all the 
desirable matches in the world are disposed of, and that 
the marriageable young persons left are really very in- 
sipid companions. This is entirely natural, but exceed- 
ingly unreasonable. To expect a man to be as much 
of a man without a wife as with one, is just as reason- 
able as to expect a half-finished house to be as beautiful 
as a finished one. It is impossible for an unmarried 
man, other things being equal, to be as agreeable a 
companion as a married man ; and lest I be suspected 
of a jest in this statement, I wish to assure my readers 
that I am entirely in earnest. Intimate contact with 
the nature of a good woman, in the relation of marriage, 
is just as necessary to the completeness of manhood, as 
the details of an architectural design are to the homely 
conveniences around which they are made to cluster. 
Every man is a better man for having children, and the 
more he extends those relations which grow out of the 
family life, the more does he open up to culture and 



Half- Finished Work. 315 

carry to completeness the very choicest portions of his 
manly nature. It is natural, therefore, that the unmar- 
ried woman should become possessed of the notion that 
all the desirable men are married, and that the unmar- 
ried man should be the subject of a similar mistake with 
relation to the other sex. It must be remembered that 
men and women are made desirable by matrimony, and 
that half-finished work should not be subjected to any 
sweeping judgments. 

Men and women are always turning out differently 
from what we expected and predicted they would. Men 
who have been laughed at and slighted during all their 
early life, become, quite to our surprise, very important 
and notable persons, and we are mortified to ascertain 
that we have been criticising half- finished men. The 
college faculty give a diploma to some very slow young 
man, with great reluctance, but in the course of twenty 
years he completes himself, and when he comes back to 
honor them with a visit they make very low bows to 
him. All young people are pieces of unfinished work, 
to be judged very carefully, and always to be regarded 
as incomplete. We can say that we do not like their 
general style, as we would say that we do not like the 
style of an unfinished house. Grecian may not be to 
our liking, and we may prefer Gothic. 

It seems to me that the Christian Church suffers more 
from the judgments of those who criticise unfinished 
work than any organized body of men and women. 



3 16 Lessons in Life. 

Here is an organization whose members do not pretend 
to perfection ; whose whole theory forbids any such 
idea. They are disciples — learners of the Divine Mas- 
ter. They are members of a school in which none ever 
arrives at fulness of knowledge. Their prayer is that 
they may grow ; and they know that if they have the 
true life in them they will grow while they live. If 
there is one thing in the world of which they are pain- 
fully conscious, it is that they are pieces of unfinished 
work. Some of the members are very much lower in 
the scale of completeness than others. In some there 
is only a confused pile of timber and bricks. In others 
only a part of the frame is up, or the walls are hardly 
more than begun. In others, perhaps, the roof is on. 
In comparatively few do we see the outlines all defined 
and the rooms in a good degree of completeness. In 
none of them is there a perfected structure, and none 
see and acknowledge their incompleteness more than 
those whose characters are farthest advanced toward 
perfection. 

Now I put it to the world outside of the Christian 
Church to say if it has been entirely fair and just in its 
judgments of the Church. Has it not judged Chris- 
tianity by these imperfect disciples, and has it not con- 
demned these imperfect disciples because they are not 
what they never pretended to be ? Has it not criti- 
cised half-finished work, and condemned, not only the 
work, but Christianity itself, because this work was not 



Half-Finished Work. 317 

up to the sample ? It is very common to hear men 
say that such and such a Christian is no better than 
the average of people outside of the Christian Church, 
thus condemning the genuineness of his character be- 
cause he is not a perfect Christian. A house is a house, 
even if it be only half-furnished. At least, it is not any 
thing else ; and as Christians cannot by any possibility 
be perfected on the instant, it follows that the large 
majority of Christians must be in various stages of 
progress — nay, that most of this large majority are not 
even half-finished. The Christian Church itself is a 
piece of unfinished work, and every individual member 
is the same. It is not pretended that either is any 
thing else. I never knew a Christian to set himself 
up as a pattern. So far as I know, they are very shy 
of pretension, and deprecate nothing more than the 
thought that anybody should take them for finished 
specimens of the work of Christianity in human life and 
character. 

A sermon upon any important subject is always a 
piece of unfinished work. I once heard a famous 
preacher say that he could preach throughout his whole 
life on the text, " the heart is deceitful above all things 
and desperately wicked," and even then have some- 
thing left to say. The statement illustrates the many- 
sidedness of truth, and the multitude of its relations to 
the life of the individual and the world. Any sensible 
preacher knows that, within the compass of a single 



3 1 8 Lessons in Life. 

sermon, he can only present a single aspect of a great 
and important truth, yet he is criticised as if it had 
been expected that the work of a dozen volumes could 
be crowded into the utterances of half an hour. What 
is called- an "exhaustive" sermon would exhaust an 
audience long before it would its subject. A sermon 
is only the dab of a brush upon a great picture, and if 
it gives a single striking view of a single great truth, 
it accomplishes its object. It must necessarily be an 
unfinished piece as regards its exposition of truth ; and 
the same may be said of any essay on any subject. 
Every writer begins in the middle of things, and leaves 
off in the middle of things ; and every thing he writes 
relates at some point to every thing that everybody 
has written. No man cleans up the field over which 
he walks, and leaves nothing to be said ; and the best 
we do is unfinished work. 

There are those who, in view of the sin and suffer- 
ing which appear on every hand, are moved to impugn 
the goodness and love of Him who created the world 
by His power, and sustains and orders it by His provi- 
dence. Millions are whelmed in the darkness of hea- 
thenism ; other millions are bound by the chains of 
slavery; the oppressor is clothed in purple and fine linen ; 
the beautiful and innocent are the victims of treach- 
erous lust ; children cry for bread beneath the windows 
of luxury; justice is denied to the poor by men who 
take bribes of wealth ; and deceit circumvents and 



Half- Finished Work. 319 

baffles honor. Such a world as this the critics condemn 
as a failure, which reflects alike upon the benevolence 
and power of its Maker ; but these men have an emi- 
nent place among the fools who criticise half-finished 
work. If they could have witnessed the creation of 
the earth, and watched it through all the processes by 
which it was prepared for the reception of the human 
race, they would doubtless have been quite as critical 
as they are now, and quite as unreasonable. Suppose 
a man should visit his pear-trees in midsummer, and 
on tasting the fruit upon them, should condemn them 
and order them to be cut down and removed — how 
should we characterize his folly ? He has criticised 
half-finished fruit, and made a fatal mistake. It is just 
as unreasonable to condemn a half-finished world as a 
half-finished pear. Human society must be brought 
to perfection by regularly instituted and slowly operat- 
ing processes. It may take as long to perfect society 
as it did to create the world that it lives on ; and God 
is not to be found fault with for the flavor of a fruit 
slowly ripening beneath the light of His smile and the 
warmth of His love, but not yet fully ripe. 

Mr. Buckle undertook to write a history of civiliza- 
tion, or, rather, he commenced to write an introduction 
to a history of civilization. His progress was not great, 
and he doubtless realized that he had undertaken a task 
which he could never finish. He labored upon it while 
he lived, and now some other daring man will take up 



320 Lessons in Life. 

the thread where he dropped it, and go on until he in 
turn will be obliged to relinquish his unfinished task to 
a successor. When the work shall be finished, after its 
original design, it will doubtless be found to be anti- 
quated. It undertook to organize a half-finished life — 
to reason upon forces that had only half revealed their 
nature and their power — to develop principles whose 
relations were imperfectly known. In short, it must 
necessarily prove to be a half-finished history of a half- 
finished civilization, whose ever newly opened event 
will throw a modifying light on all that shall have pre- 
ceded it. 

We have, therefore, but little finished work in this 
world. Not a finished character lives among mankind. 
No nation of the world illustrates a consummate civil- 
ization. All presentations of truth, of whatever nature 
and relation, are necessarily incomplete. Life is too 
short, comprehension too limited in its grasp, and ex- 
pression too feeble or too clumsy, to allow the mind 
fully to organize, vitalize, and fill out to roundness and 
just proportion, a single creature of legitimate art. 
It is, therefore, literally true that the criticisms of the 
world are the judgments of the world's half-finished 
men on the world's half-finished affairs. Imperfection 
sits in judgment on incompleteness, and the natural 
consequence is that criticism, in whatever field of 
demonstration, is little more than a record of notions, 
that may be better or worse than those that oppose them, 



Half- Finished Work. 321 

It is with a depressing sense of the incompleteness 
of these lessons in life, that I now indite their closing 
paragraph. I cannot but be aware that the criticisms 
I have indulged in relate very largely to half-finished 
work, and I painfully feel that they are the product of 
a most imperfect judgment. If the reader has found 
them kind, charitable, hopeful — tending toward that 
which is good — and lenient toward human frailty, loyal 
to common sense, and faithful to virtue ; if he has found 
in them that which leaves him a larger and a more 
liberal man — advanced in some degree toward that 
perfection which we are ever striving for, but which 
we never reach, then my aim has been accomplished, 
and I bid him God speed ! 



THE END. 




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